


Fighting For Our Heaven With Hell

by thesaltybitch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Brother/Brother Incest, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Other, References to Depression, Sibling Incest, They all deserved better, Thor gets TLC, friends that don't suck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-09 04:36:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18909703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaltybitch/pseuds/thesaltybitch
Summary: It had all started out so simple: save Thor.Not that he'd ever been good at saving things, mind. Loki knew his strengths lay in chaos and destruction and he was very comfortable with them. But the thing about saving Thor was that he couldn't say no and that's how he ended up in stupid situations like this.He hadn't meant to help save the world and he certainly hadn't meant to fight alongside the Avengers to do it.After all, who the hell wants to be a hero?*(alternately: endgame sucked and the author got hella salty about it)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- This is for everyone who hated Endgame.
> 
> \- Thank you, always, to [Snuzz](https://twitter.com/spacerenegades) for letting me bitch to you at any hour of the day. This braincell is a dumpster fire, but together we make it work.
> 
> \- This is my self-indulgent child of a fic. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> ***This will be posted in two parts. Part 2 will be up next week (by 5/31)!****

_where can you go_  
_we fight we earn_  
_we never learn_  
_and through it all_  
_the hero falls_

~*~

**New Asgard**

 

Home. It wasn’t quite the right word for it. 

Loki had come to this conclusion the second the Asgardian remnant set foot in this place, a haggard pack of refugees. They made due, of course, but it wasn’t their home and they knew it. Valkyrie knew it. He knew it. But that’s still what they called it, driven by desperation or determination, it didn’t seem to matter.

Thor knew it as well, but whether he cared was another issue entirely.

The war hadn’t been kind to anyone.

Light snoring reverberated around the room. He had snored occasionally from what Loki remembered growing up with him, but never so often as now, which was all the time. He unfolded his limbs and rose from the chair he was in and sat next to his brother on the couch. 

Thor was rolled over to one side, deeply asleep, a beer bottle hanging from his fingers. If Loki was as real and solid as his brother he might have picked it up and set it aside. He might have coaxed him awake and made him go to his bed or, if he wouldn’t wake, covered him with one of the heavy blankets strewn across the filthy room. 

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Ymir knew he’d tried with every fibre of his being to bring himself back, so much so that he’d inadvertently vanished for a week. At least he gathered it had been about a week when he finally broke through again and collapsed onto Thor’s kitchen floor. 

Now he knew better. 

Still, he brushed at the long strands of Thor’s hair all the same and tried to ignore the pang as his fingers passed right through them. The golden locks had been unkempt and uncut for months now, rarely out of his face except for when Val managed to convince him to let her braid it back. Loki hummed and continued to busy himself by letting his fingers hover along the edges of Thor’s face and the lines of exhaustion etched into the creases by his eyes and between his brows. 

Val would show up soon. It was well into the morning, but Thor didn’t give a damn about time of day anymore. He isolated himself and drank and sometimes allowed Korg and Miek to come over and play games on the Midgardian game machine. 

Loki supposed they were good for him for what they could offer which was friendship devoid of judgement. Val was a little more practical, just as strong-willed as Thor had once been. She was fitting into her role as Steward of New Asgard well, maintaining order and rule while still deferring to a king who no longer acknowledged his crown. Loki wasn’t sure his brother would ever willingly accept the title again.

It was a shame really, he thought as he leaned over to rest on Thor’s shoulder, he had truly grown into somebody worthy of admiration and praise. He had always thought so in the privacy of his own mind, of course, but Thor had gained the kind of gravitas that lent itself towards ruling over the past several hundred years. He had finally been ready for a crown.

He’d finally accepted the damn thing too, only to have everything ripped from under him in a matter of hours. If only they’d known it was just the beginning of the nightmare to come.

Loki pressed an invisible kiss to his brother’s skin and imagined the warmth he would find there. 

There was a heavy knock at the door, announcing Val’s presence. She came around like clockwork, stubborn as all hell and determined. Loki watched Thor’s eyelids flutter but remain shut. She knocked again, louder and more insistent. 

“Thor, are you up?” she called, her voice carrying clearly through the thick wooden door. 

Loki waited for his brother to respond, knowing he wouldn’t. He didn’t respond to much anymore.

“Listen, I’m going to come inside, okay?” 

Thor never locked the door. It creaked as it opened, catching on one of the thick blankets on the floor and moving it with a rustle of wool on wood. Val stooped to pick it up as she came in. She folded it over an arm, looking around the place critically until her gaze landed on Thor. She pursed her lips.

Loki waited to see what she would do.

Sometimes she yelled, brusque and commanding to get Thor moving in the mornings. Today her boots thumped gently against the floor as she made her way over, picking up blankets along the way. She crouched down in front of them, her face twisted in a kind of version of sadness. Resignation, maybe, Loki thought. 

She sighed and straightened, tossing all but one of the blankets onto the chair Loki had vacated earlier and covering Thor with the remaining one. She took the beer bottle from his hand and began to pick up around him, taking a substantial number of bottles to the recycling bin and dumping the blankets in the wash. 

Loki curled up into Thor, hovering somewhere in his chest, and mindlessly watched her pick up. She did this sometimes and Loki was pleasantly surprised to see how much it seemed to help. Thor didn’t see himself as somebody who was worth...well, much of anything now. Loki had realized rather belatedly that Val knew what he would need more acutely than most.

Thor slept through it all, occasionally shifting in his sleep. When Val was done she returned and began the arduous task of getting him up. 

“Sun's up, Your Majesty,” she said, giving him a firm shake on the shoulder. “Which means so are we.”

Thor groaned and rolled away from her. 

“No, no,” Val gripped his bicep and rolled him back over, looming over him with a small grin. “I need your help today, it’s time to get up.”

Loki felt his heart sink as he watched Thor peel his eyes open to look at her. He wasn’t annoyed or defiant, he was just empty. Any trace of the fire he had once possessed was gone. 

“Nobody needs me.” 

He rolled away from her, tangling the blanket she had laid over him earlier and squeezing his eyes shut as if doing so might help him disappear. After twenty more minutes of trying, Val squeezed his shoulder and let him be. Some days were worth fighting him, some weren’t.

Thor remained still for a long time after she left and Loki’s heart broke when tears began to slip silently down his brother’s face.

*

The days passed much the same. Sometimes Val was able to get Thor out of his house and when she did, the people were kind. She would put him to work in literally any manual labor she could think of—fishing, building homes, picking up supplies and the like. Thor took the duties on without comment, always with a beer in hand and a smile on his face, but he wasn’t fooling anyone.

Loki thought he probably knew that. 

Thor would stick around for the job and as soon as it was over, he retreated to the house. 

Loki followed him around some of the time. Other times he’d skulk around and follow Val, or some of the other Asgardians to see what the gossip was. Was there talk of their king and his current state? There wasn’t. 

Sometimes he had visitors. 

The Avengers actually visited fairly regularly to check in and take him to dinner or into town, or sometimes just to sit and be with him. They had all been in the fight together, they understood what he’d lost.

“How are you doing, Thor?” Steve asked one day.

Tonight they were sitting outside in the open, overlooking the rolling green of New Asgard. It was dusk and the sky was painted splashes of gold and pink. Loki had never been partial to many places on Midgard, but he could almost appreciate this. Steve was sitting next to Thor on a small bench that leaned against the side of the house while Bucky stretched out on the ground, idly playing with a blade of grass. 

Loki settled in a spot nearby to fiddle with threads of seidr. Messing with his magic had started out as goal, that goal being to get out of whatever limbo he currently existed in, but it had been months of work without progress. Now he just did it to keep from going mad.

There was a way to get a physical body back, he knew that much. He’d read about it on Asgard as a child in one of the copious books he’d smuggled laboriously out of the library. It was only when Frigga had eventually caught him and laughed in her gentle way and told him he could have whatever books he wanted that he began to devour everything he could get his hands on. 

He wished he’d payed more attention to necromancy.

Bucky was talking from the grass. “Hey Thor, we’re working on a new way to—”

“Time travel,” Steve cut in, looking at Bucky pointedly. “We’re looking into the possibilities of time travel.”

Loki’s ears perked up and he shifted his attention from his work to listen. Thor was sitting there politely, but disinterested. Bucky was frowning at Steve, clearly annoyed. 

“Steve, he deserves to know,” Bucky said, sitting up and bracing himself against the ground with his metal arm. 

Steve seemed to struggle for a moment. Thor took a swig of the beer and and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Know what?” he asked. 

Steve sighed and caved. “We’re looking into time travel because we’re going back to get the stones. We’re going after him, Thor. It’s why we came today, to talk to you about coming with us.”

Oh shit. 

Loki’s gaze snapped to his brother in time to see a shadow pass over his face. Thor got up abruptly. Loki got to his feet as well, hands full of seidr quite forgotten as he watched.

“Thor?” Bucky asked.

Thor paused, his massive back to them.

“Are you—” his grip tightened on the empty bottle he held in his hand. “When—?”

The question hung in the air. 

“Natasha is working on the timelines right now,” Bucky said. “We’ll probably split into teams to get the stones before Thanos—”

“Do not say his name!” Thor spun and pointed at him. 

His finger shook and his eyes filled with tears. Loki clenched his fists. Thor had never been good at hiding his emotions, not that he’d ever bothered to try, but this was different. This was a festering wound of pain and self-loathing, raw and ugly, the likes of which Loki had never seen in him before.

Steve and Bucky were both on their feet now. 

“Thor,” Steve said warily.

Loki had to give the Captain credit for the steadiness in his voice. The space around Thor sparked with power and wound through the air, a roiling mass of energy just begging to be unleashed. It was a familiar energy that Thor normally had under control, but it had grown ragged and unchecked. Loki knew he didn’t have that control anymore.

A couple sparks passed beneath his feet and with it came the reminder of all the pain it had taken for Thor to reach this point. 

A lick of rage lit him up, scorching him from the inside out in its intensity. He clenched his fists.

There was a small pop near his sternum and suddenly things felt very different. A cool breeze ruffled through his hair and he could taste the salt on the air. The ground was solid beneath his feet. 

Three sets of eyes whipped around in perfect sync and stared, fixed _on_ him, not through him. 

_Finally._

“Ta-da,” he said blandly, raising his hands slowly. 

The bottle shattered in Thor’s hand. Bucky jumped.

“Gentlemen,” Loki nodded to Steve and Bucky respectively, both of whom had taken defensive stances. Understandably so, he supposed. He let his gaze meet his brother’s. Thor was breathing harshly, tears brimming dangerously on his thick eyelashes. “Brother.”

“You,” Thor threatened, his voice trembling. 

“Please, don’t throw that at me,” Loki said, eyeing at the jagged edges of the ruined beer bottle Thor still clenched in his fist. 

Thor’s face screwed up in anger and he hurled it at him. Loki reacted quickly and blasted the glass from the air before it hit him. The pieces disintegrated and turned into smoke. Loki waved it away with a frown. 

“Honestly, you could have cut me,” he said, miffed, wrinkling his nose at the smell of burnt glass. “I’m not invincible, you know.”

Thor’s lip trembled. “How—?”

“I— _oof._ ”

He was hit in the chest with all of Thor at once, massive arms winding around him, fingers fisting into the light fabric of his cloak. Loki slipped his arms around him and felt him take a deep, shuddering breath. He knew at once Thor was crying. He hugged him back fiercely, reveling in the fact that his fingers brushed against the soft fabric of Thor’s hoodie instead of passing through. He hadn’t realized how much it would mean to hold him again. 

A small noise escaped him. 

_Thor._

He held him tighter. 

Along the road at the base of the hill, a yellow truck rumbled into view and stopped, the engine humming as it idled. Val rolled down the window and if she was surprised to see Loki she didn’t show it. 

“You boys need a ride back into town?” she asked, looking pointedly at Steve.

Steve and Bucky left and the truck stuttered down the hill and wound out of sight, leaving him with Thor, alone on the top of the hill just as the stars began to appear in the wake of the sinking sun. Thor was positively crushing him.

“Easy, brother,” Loki wheezed, pressing a kiss to Thor’s hair and attempting to disentangle himself. “I do still need to breathe.”

Thor choked a laugh and loosened his grip, but didn’t let go. “Loki, I’m so sorry—”

“Shh,” Loki said. “It’s not your fault.”

“I should have—”

“Thor,” Loki forced him to let go and finally took a good look into his face.

His face was ruddy, flushed pink from emotion and alcohol consumption, the light and vigor he had once had were faint if not gone. He was looking into the face of a man who had been completely beaten, broken, and tossed to the wind. Loki felt his heart break all over again. 

“Why did you do it?” Thor asked him, his fingers clenching and unclenching in the fabric hanging from Loki’s shoulders.

Loki looked at him steadily. “You know why.”

Thor shook his head violently. “No, why did you let him—” he took a deep breath. “Why?”

Loki sighed and waved his arms helplessly. “Fine, if you must know, I may have underestimated him.” 

Thor’s eyes flashed. “You what?”

“I had a plan, alright?” Loki said. “I was going to—”

“You mean to tell me you did that on purpose because you thought you could play some trick? Some game?” Thor’s voice was rising and the air was beginning to crackle around them again. 

It was mostly true. He'd had a plan, it just hadn’t involved Thor getting captured and so he’d had to improvise. Storm clouds rolled in from the distance, dark and ominous. 

“I never meant to die,” he snapped. 

But Thor was chuckling; and then he was laughing; and then he was outright roaring. It was a harsh sound, grating to his ears and cutting with an ugly edge of pain. Loki watched him apprehensively, alternating between eyeing Thor and the gathering storm overhead. 

“I should have guessed,” Thor said as his laughter died down abruptly. He looked at Loki and his eyes were dull again, crinkled in a dead smile. He poked a thick finger into Loki’s chest. “I should have guessed it. You always were so clever, brother.”

He turned away and stumbled toward the house. The clouds began to clear. 

Loki sighed and trailed after him, letting his feet drag slightly over the grass and breathing in the damp air. He had expected Thor’s anger, he wasn’t prepared for his indifference.

In the house Thor had already disappeared into his room. Loki closed the front door behind him and went to his bedside. 

“Thor,” he said. “I know you’re angry, but can you please talk to me?”

Thor remained with his back to him, breathing slowly. Loki ground his teeth and looked around. The room was stifling and the curtains were drawn. It hadn’t felt fresh air in weeks. He walked over and pushed aside heavy fabric to open the window. He stood there for a moment, letting the clean air wash over him.

Thor was stubborn and hurting, a combo that had always resulted in a stunningly difficult, emotionally labile God of Thunder. Maybe that was why he’d finally spiraled so far out of control, unable to accept help from his friends because they didn’t know how to fight him or how to help him. 

But mortals were idiots.

Loki had over a thousand years worth of experience with him and that had to count for something. Nobody knew Thor the way he did.

He walked back over to the bed. 

“Move,” he said, nudging Thor with his knee. 

When he didn’t move, Loki kicked his boots off and removed his cloak and crawled over his brother, settling on his side to face him. Thor remained still, staring blankly at the base of Loki’s throat like his mind was galaxies away. Loki guessed it probably was. 

He let his eyes trace Thor’s face in the growing darkness like he had done so many times before. His brother was as beautiful as ever with his long lashes fanning out over impossibly blue eyes. Loki took in the shape of his cheekbones, the line of his nose, and all the way down to the curve of his mouth. He brought his fingers up to brush across the wiry, overgrown beard and run the pads of his fingers over his skin. 

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered, not realizing he’d opened his mouth.

Thor blinked and his lips tugged down at the corners. Before he knew what had happened, Loki found himself with all of Thor pressed against him again, curling against his chest and gripping him like he would never let go. 

Loki looped his arms around him and let him cry in big, shuddering sobs that shook him to the core.

*

Morning poured in through the window along with the sounds of birds. Loki woke to the sound of Thor snoring gently against him, one massive arm slung possessively around his waist, a heavy thigh wedged between his legs.

Loki sighed and snuggled closer, resting his chin on Thor’s head and closing his eyes to take the moment in. He knew Thor had woken up when the snoring stopped.

“Hey,” he said softly, pressing a kiss to his hair and looking down at him.

“I thought you might have been a dream,” Thor said, his voice low and thick with sleep. 

“I’m here,” Loki said simply. 

They lay like that for a while, lost in their thoughts. Eventually Loki returned from his reverie.

“I need a shower,” he said, unwinding from Thor’s grasp to sit up. “Are you coming?”

Thor considered for a moment. 

“You’re coming,” Loki decided for him. “Come on.”

Thor groaned but allowed Loki to drag him up and into the bathroom where they stripped and Loki tested the water with a hand. When it was warm enough, he pulled his brother into the shower. He scrubbed himself clean and washed his hair, relishing the feeling of existing as a physical being again. Then he turned his attentions to his brother, who continued to stand there in the steam looking lost.

Loki wet a washcloth and did it for him, running the soap over his body in big circles and washing away the grime from days of existing in a haze. Loki moved on to his hair and took his time running his fingers through sheets of long, blonde hair, patiently working out the snarls he found and then rinsing them out. 

He was surprised to find he found no small amount of healing in the act. Sitting by and watching Thor suffer without any way to help him had cut him to the quick. It felt so good to finally be able to take care of him. 

Overcome with a sudden wave of emotion, he let the washcloth drop to the ground and took his brother’s face in his hands, searching the worn, tired face and desperately wishing he could kiss it all away. 

He supposed it didn’t hurt to try. 

He started with a kiss on Thor’s forehead, and then lightly on each eyelid. He pressed one to a cheek, and then to the other. Thor breathed deeply beneath his fingers and Loki felt the hitch in it. Emboldened, he leaned forward and caught his brothers lips against his own in a chaste kiss.

He had only meant to linger a moment, in case Thor wasn’t ready, but Thor made a faint, strangled sound in the back of his throat and responded to him like a man starved. He’d missed this. Loki let the rest of his thoughts fly out of his mind and his body catch fire. His fingers slid into Thor’s hair, gripping him fiercely and walking him backward until he was against the wall. 

Thor was different now than before, rounder, softer, and more uncertain than he had once been, but there was a desperation in his touch, the grip of a man who knew exactly what he had to lose. 

Loki parted his lips and let Thor in, his eyes fluttering shut. He tasted the same as Loki remembered, fierce and sweet and electric. He drank him in hungrily, pressing bruises into his skin in an effort to get closer still. 

It was brief. He was already hard and by the time he reached down to take them both in his fist, it was only a few firm strokes before he was spilling over. Thor followed seconds later and Loki worked him gently through it, pressing kisses to his neck as he came down. 

They remained like that, skin against skin, clinging to one another until the water ran cold and forced them out. Thor seemed to have gained a little more life once they dried off and got dressed. Loki borrowed some of Thor’s clothes and they hung off him like the drapes he’d pulled aside from the window the night before.

By the time they’d made it to the kitchen Thor’s mood had lifted considerably for however brief a time it would last. Loki hunted through his cabinets for food. There wasn’t much that wasn’t foreign to him, but he scrounged up some oatmeal from the depths of the pantry and, after getting frustrated with the box in the wall that Thor called a microwave, he used a sloppy, irritable blast of seidr to cook it. 

They were just sitting down to eat when Val showed up like she always did. She was wearing a bright yellow, leather jacket and her hair was only half up leaving the curls to fly free and wild. She seemed pleased but not surprised to see them up and about.

“Val!” Thor greeted her loudly, getting up to pull her into a hug. 

Loki blew on his oatmeal. 

“Morning,” Val said, her voice muffled by Thor’s hug.

Here,” Val said after Thor released her, tossing a canvas bag at Loki. “I thought you might want something to wear other than his clothes.” She jerked her thumb at Thor who smiled sunnily.

She rolled her eyes but she was smiling, too. Loki knew it had been a while since Thor had been in a decent mood.

“So, you’re back, then,” she addressed Loki, sliding onto the bench as Thor took his seat across from him. “Are you staying or do you have other plans?”

“Oh, I’m staying,” Loki said, his eyes flickering to Thor before peering into the bag. It was filled with soft Midgardian attire in greens and yellows. “This is New Asgard is it not?”

Val tilted her head. “So did you die or….” she waved a hand around vaguely. “What have you been doing all this time?” 

Loki shot his brother a quick look. Thor’s mood had already slipped a little. He was still making an effort to smile but he stared at his breakfast like a portal had opened up inside the large clay bowl and was trying to swallow him.

“I’ve been here,” he said airily, taking a too-large bite of hot oatmeal. It burned his throat. 

Val raised a brow. “You’ve been here? How?”

“Well, I assume I was some kind of ghost,” Loki said irritably. “I don’t know, I haven’t actually been dead before, it was all rather new.”

“Hmmm,” she looked at him shrewdly. “Alright, well, if you’re here, you help. Right, Your Majesty?”

“Mmhm,” Thor agreed distractedly. 

Val patted him on the back and stood. “Meet me by the pub in an hour?” 

Loki nodded and watched her go. The little truck she’d driven yesterday rumbled to life and crept away along the dirt road. He finished his breakfast and cleared away their dishes when Thor finished his.

Val had brought him a fair amount of things. He changed into them when he got the chance, pulling on a black pair of pants, some socks and a pair of boots that were his size, he didn’t know how she’d known. He kept Thor’s shirt on. 

Then he set to the arduous task of getting Thor to leave the house. It took some convincing, but Loki eventually got him to agree to walk to the pub, a brisk fifteen minute walk away. His brother could always use time in the sunshine and fresh air.

It had been his favorite thing once.

As it turned out, Val had a lot of wood she needed moved to a location down the hill where they were putting up new housing. It took them most of the day and even though he hated this kind of work, Loki had to admit it felt good to do something.

The temperatures dropped that night. After showering off the sweat from the day, they both took to the tiny living room where Loki lit a fire in the barely used hearth. He didn’t need the warmth, but the Aesir did, even a walking space heater like his brother. 

Thor had commandeered a spot on the couch, beer in hand, and was paging through a book. Loki felt his chest tighten. He had gotten more and more withdrawn over the course of the day, and of course Thor had the whole act down, but it didn’t fool Loki for a second. He suspected it didn’t fool most people. 

“What are you reading?” he asked, peering over the edge of the book. 

“I thought I might try reading, but I’m not in the mood,” Thor sighed and tossed the book onto the side table.

Loki barely glanced at the book and instead reached out to tuck strands of blonde hair behind his brother’s ear, still damp from their shower. It still made him catch his breath to be able to reach out and touch him, to breathe the same air, to exist with him in the same space again. He wanted to trace the edges of him until they were all he could see. He climbed into Thor’s lap, straddling his hips and carding his fingers through his hair, kissing his bearded jaw, his forehead. 

He might deny it, but he needed Thor just as much as Thor needed him. They had always been that way—you couldn’t have one without the other.

It was slow this time. The heat built between his legs the longer he continued to look at Thor, to memorize him over and over again. Thor let him place gentle kisses all over his face and neck and chest until he couldn’t bear it and took Loki into his strong arms. They ended up stripped bare and panting into each other’s mouths in the flickering light of the fire. 

He stayed curled into Thor’s side for a long time and thought his heart might burst.

When he did get up, he slipped into a set of Thor’s clothes and padded into the kitchen to make hot chocolate. He set the mugs on the coffee table, made Thor scooch over on the couch, and curled up against him to watch the flames lick around the wood in the hearth. Thor automatically wrapped his arms around him. 

“So, are you going to think about it?” he ventured after a moment, drawing lightly on Thor’s arm with his finger. “What your friends came by for?”

Thor’s hum rumbled deep in his chest. “Did you just snoop on me this whole time?”

“Absolutely not,” Loki said lazily, taking his hand and bringing it up to brush his lips against his knuckles.

“Liar.”

Loki grinned. “Not the whole time.”

Thor huffed and lapsed into silence.

“But it’s the stones, after all,” Loki pressed. “Your friends could desperately use the help. They’re not exactly the most intelligent group.”

“Loki,” Thor warned him. 

“They aren’t, though,” Loki said. “Just look at them.”

“Have care how you speak about them, little brother,” Thor said. “They are my friends.”

Loki sensed he was hitting a nerve. “Listen, I know I’m not anybody’s favorite person, but what if I were to help with this stone nonsense? I’ve got experience with three of the stones, that’s more than any of you combined. I’m acquainted with their power in ways you can’t even imagine. Brother,” Loki sat up and looked at him seriously. “Brother, this could work. I could easily be the key to this.”

Thor regarded him suspiciously. “Loki, I swear, if this is some plot for the tesseract.”

“You have to admit, I am the best equipped for the job,” Loki cocked his head to the side, holding back a smile. When Thor looked visibly sick he relented. “Okay, not funny.”

“And why would you care about the Avenger’s plans to bring everyone back?” Thor asked. “You’ve never been one for sentiment.”

“Heavens no,” Loki agreed. “But if I have to spend the rest of my life hauling wood for Valkyrie I will stay dead next time.”

Thor glared at him. 

“I’m just saying, I’m offering to help if you want to go,” Loki said. 

Thor answered by pulling him into his arms and burying his face in Loki’s hair.

*

They spent a week building the house. Asgardians were strong and the work went quickly. Loki had more splinters in his fingers than he’d ever imagined possible, a plight he complained about constantly. Thor mostly ignored him, but sometimes if he was in the right mood he would take Loki’s splinter-riddled fingers into his mouth one by one and suck on them until Loki practically pounced on him, his ordeal quite forgotten.

Loki had taken to running in the mornings. It horrified him how much he enjoyed the physical activity, something he’d never been terribly interested in before if he wasn’t practicing his seidr. Two years flickering in and out of the spectral realm tended to do things to a person. Or maybe he was just bored.

Thor never joined him, even though it had been his favorite thing back in the day. There had never been a moment when Thor, Crown Prince of Asgard and God of Thunder, couldn’t be found running, climbing, fighting, or otherwise moving at any point during the day. In fact, Odin had stopped forcing him to come to any unnecessary meetings because Thor was an absolute disaster when forced to sit still. 

Loki continued to ask him to come along even though the answer was always no. He knew his brother was fighting other battles. Once, Thor woke him in the dead of night, screaming and fully entranced by nightmares. He started weaving peace spells for him after that. 

It was a warm day when they got a visit. Loki almost jumped out of his skin when he felt the air zing around him, much different than the comfortable familiarity of Thor’s power. He’d never encountered anybody with energy to match his brother, but when the newcomer touched down in the grass not far from where they were sitting, all the hair on his arms and neck were standing on end. 

“Hey guys,” she said lightly. 

She was a tiny thing for so much power, and mortal by all appearances both visually and through the defensive Seidr he’d tossed out on instinct. She was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket, but beneath it her outfit was blue and red and reminded him very strongly of another one of Thor’s friends. 

“Let me guess, you’re about to give us a rousing speech on freedom,” Loki said, taking a sip of his water. 

She looked at him, bemused. “It’s not really my style, but I’ll be sure to let Rogers know you said hi.” 

“Loki, Carol. Carol, this is my brother, Loki,” Thor gave perfunctory introductions, moving his hand to indicate. “What are you doing here?” He added, frowning. “Val said she wasn’t expecting you until next week.”

“I’m here for you, actually,” Carol said.

Loki glanced over as Thor’s sandwich dropped from his fingers. Something about the small action spoke volumes. He felt his hackles rise. 

“Look, I came on my own because I thought you deserved to know,” she said to Thor, shoving her hands in her jacket pockets. “If you don’t wanna hear it, that’s totally up to you. I’ll go.”

Thor regarded her steadily and then picked up his sandwich again, as much a sign as any that he was ready to listen. Carol seemed to understand and walked over and dropped onto the bench. 

Thor offered her a beer, which she accepted.

“So,” she said after taking a big sip. “Steve said he already talked to you about the stones, yeah?” When Thor nodded she continued. “Cool. I guess some guy named Scott showed up, said he figured out time travel—well,” she waved her hand ambivalently. “Kinda. He gave us the idea and Tony tweaked it from there. We're doing the best we can, but I'm asking for your help and input moving forward. We could really use your experience.”

Loki sniffed and Carol glanced at him. He knew he’d offered to help and that was strictly because he loved his brother—a hellish weak point in his psychological makeup, in his opinion—but he still wasn’t keen to work with the Avengers. Any of them really, hell, he was half convinced Rogers had been placed on the earth strictly to annoy him.

“What’s up with you, anyway?” Carol asked him. “I thought you died.” 

Well, at least his reputation still preceded him.

“They say a lot of things.”

“Right,” Carol gazed at him, her fingers tapping a pattern against the brown glass of her beer. 

Loki was unsettled and a little offended to find there was no trace of fear in her eyes. Most people gave him the courtesy of a little apprehension.

“My brother has many talents,” Thor said gruffly, finishing his own beer and leaning backwards to get another one out of the cooler. “One of which is his inability to remain dead.”

He cracked the bottle open with his bare hand. Carol continued to drink hers, her brows knitted pensively.

“So,” she addressed Loki after a while. “They also say you’re not a friendly. Talk to me about that.”

Loki arched a brow at her. 

“I mean, clearly you two are a package deal, right?” She looked between the two of them and Thor nodded, more or less. “Call me crazy, but I like to get a feel for my potential teammates.”

“Why not just take their word for it?” Loki asked. 

“Because I don't have to,” Carol said simply. "I can just ask you."

“My brother is dangerous and chaotic, but he’s not evil,” Thor said when he didn’t answer. “As long as I am around you have nothing to fear from him.”

Carol’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully and Loki stared back at her calmly. She may not be afraid of him, but she didn’t know what he was capable of either. Stories only gave away so much.

“Okay,” She drained the rest of the beer and stood up. “Well, I’ll leave you two to figure things out.”

“What, that’s it?” Loki asked. “No pleading? No trying to convince us that it’s the right thing to do?”

She gave him an incredulous look. “And why would I do that? You’re not my only errand today, you know, I’m a busy girl.”

“I will contact you by the end of the week,” Thor said, raising a hand in farewell. 

She smiled and pointed at him with both index fingers. “Think about it!”

She zipped her jacket up and took a running start before launching into the sky, leaving a burning trail of energy in her wake. Loki watched her until she was a pinprick in the atmosphere, then turned and leaned on an elbow and looked at his brother. 

“Where did she come from?” he asked. 

“Space.” 

Loki waited a beat, hoping Thor might give him more than that. He didn’t. 

“And?” he pressed. “She’s human, Thor, and more powerful than any human has the right to be.”

Thor shrugged. 

Loki rolled his eyes. “Do you trust her?”

Thor played with a bottle cap, spinning it on the table a couple times before trapping it beneath a massive palm. He looked at Loki. 

“Yes.”

Loki watched him heave himself up and take the cooler with him back to the house. He knew that walk. Thor may not know it yet, but they would be at the Avengers Compound before the end of the week. 

He flicked the bottle cap off the table and stretched out along it like a cat in the sun. He might as well enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasted because the way he saw it, he was now in his final moments before he had to suffer being in the same room as Steve Rogers. Or rather, Steve Rogers was in his final moments before suffering being in the same room with him.

He couldn't help but grin at the prospect.

~*~

_art by shineonloki._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Art by the ridiculously talented [Tess](https://twitter.com/shineonloki1). Thank you, thank you for this beautiful piece of our boys! <3
> 
> \- Song lyrics are from [Heroes by Mika](https://open.spotify.com/track/0OwbRPB14dkGaISigNKUfw)
> 
> \- If you liked this, or if you just want more hellish content in your life, follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/saltierbitch) for more.


	2. Chapter 2

_time to listen to_  
_my confession_  
_i'm much less than_  
_i wanted to be_  
_you shine a light on my dark side_  
_but you don't care what you see_

~*~

**Avengers Compound, Upstate New York**

The compound was silent when they arrived, an eerie feeling to say the least. New Asgard was removed by quite a bit which made the silence less intrusive, but here in New York it felt profound and just plain wrong.

Not that it mattered to him much at the moment. He desperately hoped that nobody was there to see when they landed because he released his brother like he’d burned him and stumbled away, lurching forward and catching his palms on his knees. He hated flying and he especially hated flying with Stormbreaker. He had clung to Thor so fiercely on the way over that his fingers ached. 

“Ah, I’ve missed this,” Thor said chuckling and patting the giant axe fondly.

“I hate it,” Loki groaned from where he stood, doubled over. “Don’t ever make me do that again.”

“And how would you prefer to travel, brother? Broomstick?” 

Thor burst into laughter at his own joke and Loki glared at him, but it was half-hearted. He barely managed to steady himself before Thor’s strong hands were hauling him upright and he was being steered towards the compound, his brother’s massive arm slung heavily around his shoulders. 

He leaned into it.

Agent Romanoff was the only one there at the moment. The assassin buzzed them in and Loki allowed Thor to drag him upstairs to the conference rooms where she had directed them. 

Honestly, Loki was a little taken aback to see her in her current state. Bluntly put, she looked a right mess since the last time they had crossed paths. Her hair was longer now and sported a two toned disaster of box hair dye that would have screamed “bad breakup” in any other situation. She looked exhausted and fragile but even then, if she was surprised to see Loki she didn’t show it, ever the stoic.

“Hello, boys,” she said, that rasp in her voice that had once been natural was now the telltale scratch of too many sleepless nights. “Thanks for coming.”

“Natasha, my friend,” Thor said, striding forward to pull her into a crushing hug. “It’s good to see you.”

Loki watched with interest. Romanoff did not seem like the kind of person who would appreciate Thor’s particular brand of aggressive physicality, but to his surprise she didn’t tense under his touch. She leaned into the embrace and returned it with similar ferocity, albeit briefly. 

It told him everything he needed to know.

“It’s good to see you too, buddy,” she said to Thor, stepping back. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been good, very good, yes.”

Romanoff gave him a dubious look. It was extremely evident that Thor had not been in the best of places for a long time. It was the closest Loki thought he’d ever gotten to a bald-faced lie.

Thor seemed to sense this and immediately shifted topics. “Did you see who I brought? My brother, Loki! He’s back!”

Loki rolled his eyes as Romanoff looked at him flatly.

“I saw.”

“Agent,” he greeted her coolly. 

“Thor, you realize none of us are actually friends with your brother, right?” she said, frowning. “I don’t even like the idea of him being in the base.”

“You can relax, I’m not here for you,” Loki huffed.

One of her thin eyebrows shot up. “Really? It didn’t work out for us last time you were in our base, how is this any different?”

Thor looked at him, for once letting him answer instead of speaking for him. Loki sighed deeply.

“If you think I’m still interested in your pathetic planet, I’m not,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m here because I have an idiot for a brother and he seems to think you've got some kind of shot against Thanos.”

Thor twitched violently when he said the name. Loki glanced at him, but he didn’t say anything. 

“If I may, I'll add that my experience with three of the stones makes me a valuable asset.”

“You don’t care about humans or this planet,” she countered, frowning. “What changed?”

Loki’s eyes flickered to Thor before he could stop himself. Realization dawned on the assassin’s face and Loki swore internally. She was too quick for her own good. 

“Oh,” she said softly, looking between the two of them.

“Whatever you’re thinking—” Loki began.

But she was already looking at him in a whole new way that made him want to peel his skin off and burn it.

“You can stay,” she said carefully. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re still not friends, but as long as he’s around,” She jerked her head towards Thor, who had gotten bored and was shamelessly taking apart pens. “We’ll manage.”

Loki squinted at her, annoyed. She smiled faintly just as Thor finally went too far with a pen and snapped it in half, covering himself in a spray of ink.

*

They spent the rest of the day exploring the base. Thor had never resided there, but Stark had set a room set aside for him anyway when it was built. It was very nice for what it was, including a king bed and a balcony that overlooked the grounds. There was even a bookcase that held a couple of books. Loki was briefly intrigued, but found they were mostly books on policy and foreign affairs; helpful for an Avenger, but useless to him.

Agent Romanoff did keep them for a little while to go over the details of what had happened after the snap. Loki pressed for details which she gave him without a fight, either she was too tired to care or it truly didn’t matter if he knew or not. 

“Our issue is figuring out the time travel piece,” she said, waving at the screens projected in front of them. 

They were in a large conference room set up like a personal office. She was at a big desk at the edge of the room, dressed in a black tank and black fatigues. She had slid halfway down in her chair and her feet were propped on the desk. Her black socks obscured her face from where Loki sat with Thor on a large, squashy leather couch.

He shoved Thor’s legs to the side so he could scoot back a little further to see her. She had pulled her hair up into a half bun, which only served to emphasize the bad dye job. The colors were so distracting, they made him itchy. If she'd would only let him use a tiny bit of seidr...

“I think our best bet is to hit New York during _your_ first visit to Earth,” she pointed a pen at Loki. “Because three of the stones will be there at once.”

“Three?” he tore his gaze away from her hair.

“Three, yeah,” she nodded absently. “And conveniently enough, I think our plan can hinge around two of those three.”

“Time and space,” Thor rumbled next to him. 

“Hang on, the time stone was in New York in 2012?” Loki asked. 

Romanoff’s head lolled to the side to look at him. “Like I said, convenient.”

“Alright,” Loki pulled his legs into a pretzel shape and looked at the holoscreen pensively. “So, we use whatever Stark cooked up in his lab to get back to 2012, presuming things go according to plan, we zip back here and use time and space to retrieve the rest."

He looked at her and she nodded. 

"What are you doing about a catalyst?" Thor asked with a frown. 

Loki raised a brow and Romanoff shrugged. She seemed remarkably detached for somebody who had spent the last hour holding back tears when she talked them through the events of the past two years. Apparently she had spent six months just searching for survivors. She didn't have family, of course, what spy could afford close relatives? But she did have what Loki knew to be a kind of family, the one where you chose who you wanted in your life. 

But then he'd never been given the luxury of having close friends. Or indeed, having friends at all.

"The Gauntlet is up to Tony and Bruce, you'll have to ask them," she answered Thor. "The last time I asked about it I got my head bitten off, so I stopped asking."

"Good move," Thor said.

Loki was getting antsy. He redirected the conversation. "Well, I think it's as good a plan as any to be starting with. I suppose the next question is, who’s going on these stone retrieving excursions? Surely not everybody.”

Romanoff outlined a rough sketch of her plans for the jump and brainstormed a little bit. He supposed he really shouldn't be surprised that she had a solid mind for tactics, but what he hadn't expected was how much he enjoyed bouncing ideas with her. He'd gotten so engrossed, in fact, that he was now sitting on the edge of the desk, drawing on the flat screen without even realizing he’d gotten up. 

“No, because this way Thanos—”

At the sound of the name, there was a loud thump, startling both of them and making him look up. He’d almost forgotten Thor was in the room, but then again, he wasn’t sure the pale, blank man in front of him was his brother.

“Thor?” Loki asked.

Thor didn’t respond, his face twisted in a mask of conflicting emotions. He walked stiffly from the room; there was the faint ring of metal in the air and Stormbreaker shot past the door, followed shortly by a rush of air.

Loki sagged and let out the breath he’d been unconsciously holding. 

“How long has he been like that?” Romanoff asked, still staring out the empty doorway. 

“Ages,” Loki said. “Since he beheaded the Mad Titan.”

She looked at him, her own eyes filling just a little. "We tried to help him, you know. It's been hard on everybody, but at some point all you can do is be there for people." She gave a small, hollow laugh. "They never tell you how much it sucks."

Loki was silent. Thor was, in himself, a walking reminder of their sad, post-apocalyptic world. He had been strong and optimistic and impossible to break and it had broken him, somehow. For someone like Natasha Romanoff to break—a person who, for all intents and purposes, came into the world with their hands stained red—it painted a chilling picture.

She sniffed and wiped furiously at her eyes. “He blames himself. For everything.” 

“I’m aware,” Loki said dully.

He was too tired to play games and the assassin was being altogether too cordial and it was lulling him into a false sense of security. He knew it and he watched himself lean into it anyway. She didn’t seem to mind. 

“You actually care for him, don’t you?” 

She said it more like a statement than a question. 

He shot her an indignant look. “Is it so hard to believe? Heaven forbid the monster care for his brother?”

“Can you blame us?” she countered. “Last time we met you were trying to take over the planet. I mean, you're hardly Thanos, but it doesn’t exactly instill the warm fuzzies.”

He smiled flatly. "You might be surprised."

Thor wasn’t the only one personally scarred by the Titan. 

“Why’d you do it, anyway?” She asked, pushing herself up from the chair and leaning forward to place her elbows on the desk. 

“Half the universe is gone and now you want to know why?” Loki asked, amused.

She shrugged. “We’ve got the time. Why not?”

Loki looked at her, mildly amused. They seemed to have reached a ceasefire of sorts, but he was nowhere close to making her into a confidant.

“Besides,” she continued. “I think you owe it to us.”

“I don’t owe mortals anything,” Loki bit out, annoyed. “The Titan is the reason I happened to you and your sad little planet, it's been him all along. Or hadn't you figured that out yet?”

“Thanos?” 

“You humans really can't fathom the idea that you're not the center of the universe, can you,” Loki snapped. “I did my time under the Titan's thumb. Twice. And I suffered it long before he touched your loved ones or your world. You have no rights by which to judge me, Agent Romanoff.”

He stopped talking and found he was breathing fast. Heat burned beneath his cheeks and in his chest, a reminder that his experiences with the Titan would forever fester beneath the surface. Romanoff watched him, waiting to see if there was more, but there wasn’t. He was done. 

“Anybody want tacos?” 

The moment was broken as a man appeared in the doorway and traipsed down the couple stairs into the room. He was short and had a cheerful face that looked deeply out of place in their current situation. His flannel was rolled up to his elbows and he had on a pair of boots that Loki personally hated, but what was most notable about his appearance was the amount of food he had crammed into his hands.

“Who’s that guy?” the man looked to Romanoff and waved four tacos at Loki, then his eyes widened. “Hey, I know you, you were that guy back in New York all those years ago! Yeah! I thought you were bad. Isn’t he bad? What are you doing here?”

Loki gave him a cool, predatory smile, purely for his own benefit and was rewarded with wide eyes and an unabashed drop of the jaw. He didn’t need any further encouragement to leave the room. Besides, if Thor didn’t come back in the next hour he was going to have to look for him and explain to somebody why he drank a liquor store.

*

Thor returned all soon enough, looking distinctly worse for wear. He landed with a massive thud on the main balcony with keg of beer and a pair of cheap sunglasses plastered over his face, his broad frame filled the large entrance, backlit by a brilliantly orange sky. Loki appreciated the drama of it all, but he was more concerned with the amount of alcohol he'd brought with him.

His brother breezed into the compound, paused to give him a big smack on the cheek and kept on walking right into the kitchen area. He was humming a jaunty little number as he began setting things up, but it was, in Loki's opinion, the most glaring display of his denial yet. 

“That can’t be good,” Agent Romanoff said from behind him.

Loki looked over at her and saw she brought another woman with her, tall and bald with big, expressive eyes and teeth so white they looked luminescent. Her clothing was colorful and bright, not unlike Asgardian royal garb, but the colors met in very different combinations and patterns. There was also gold. She wore a lot of gold.

"Okoye, this is Loki," Romanoff said. "Loki, meet Okoye."

Loki inclined his head. Okoye did not. 

"This is the one?" Okoye stared at him as she leaned towards her friend. "He does not look like a warrior."

Romanoff held back a grin as she caught Loki's eye. 

"I'm sorry, you are?" Loki asked. 

He didn't bother to straighten from where he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Okoye clicked her tongue and squinted at him. Somehow she managed to look down her nose disapprovingly even though she was shorter than him. 

" _Tch ahh,_ this one likes his attitude doesn't he?" she sniffed. "I am the leader of Wakanda. Place holder, until our true king returns."

Loki regarded her steadily. Somebody who still had hope, interesting.

Romanoff looked very spartan next to her friend, dressed in the same black outfit from before, but she’d rebraided her hair into one long plait down the middle of her head. She also wore a pair of combat boots with soft soles designed to absorb sound. 

"Pleasure," he said tensely. He didn't much like how she was still able to sneak up on him.

“Oh relax, would you?” Romanoff said dryly, glancing up at him. “I’m not going to stab you.”

Okoye made a dubious sound and Romanoff nudged her with an elbow.

Loki blinked. “I’m not in the habit of giving my enemies the benefit of the doubt.”

She barked a laugh at that.

“We’re on the same side now, don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go to the range with us, but I have a feeling you might have had the right idea about Thor."

She nodded towards the kitchen where they could just make out his brother's hulking silhouette struggling to tap the keg. Okoye shook her head and made a series of clicks with her mouth and then muttered under her breath ("my god, he's going to hurt himself.") before striding over to help Thor.

“What use would a range be for me, Agent?” Loki asked, frowning as Thor slipped and dropped whatever he was holding. “Your weaponry is barbaric, I have no use for it.”

“Who said anything about using a gun?” She said, her mouth twisting in the first semblance of a smile. “We have target practice and all the toys. I’m sure we could find you something, or didn’t you remember Stark is on our team?”

Other than Thor, nobody had ever extended Loki the simplest courtesy of being included; he’d always had to invite himself along or learn to be alone. The years had taught him over and over again that he would never be picked last, he would never get picked at all. Yet here, a thousand or so years into his lifetime, and a diminutive creature, a stoic, accomplished member of the human race, was standing there inviting him to do something like it was the most natural decision in the world. 

He blinked. 

“It’s okay, don’t feel obligated to take me up on it,” then she looked at him in surprise. “Do you feel obligated?”

Maybe he did. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked.

“I don’t know, you’re a towering, thousand-year-old god from another planet,” she said. “I don’t know what’s normal on Asgard. I just figured you might want something to do.”

Loki had the peculiar sensation of something in his chest. It felt like gratitude. 

“Maybe next time, Agent,” he said carefully.

“Suit yourself,” She patted him on the back. “And for god’s sake, call me Natasha. Something about the way you say “agent” just—” she waved her hand in distaste. “It freaks me out.”

“I'll think about it,” Loki smirked.

She swatted at him as Okoye returned, looking frazzled. 

“If you change your mind about joining us, it’s down the stairs at the end of the hallway and to the left. Just don’t sneak up on me,” Natasha quirked a smile and spun on her heel. 

Okoye paused long enough to give him a nod and then followed Natasha down the hallway.

Loki watched them go and then turned his attention back to his brother.

*

Thor had certainly made some choices that night.

It wasn’t his worst night, by far. Still, by the end of the night Loki had considered every possible way to kill him. The remaining Avengers had trickled in throughout the evening and Loki suffered through just about as many suspicious greetings as he had the stomach for. He didn’t begrudge them their mistrust, but he didn’t enjoy it either. 

It was close to midnight when he retreated to the kitchen where Thor had put on music and was stubbornly drinking alone. Loki watched him sadly, wondering how he’d gotten to this point. Rhetorically. He knew better than anybody why his brother was this way.

“Thor, you can’t be doing this,” he’d said wearily. “We have work to do.”

Thor smiled that half-dead smile he’d been parading behind for weeks. He reached for him and Loki only barely resisted out of habit. He let Thor interlace their fingers, the heavy heat of his hand was comforting. Loki allowed himself to be dragged into a strong embrace his cheek against Thor’s broad chest. Thor rocked back and forth in a clumsy, halting dance, a bastardized interpretation from their days in Asgardian court. 

Those days seemed so far away now. How much he would give to have their only problems be Thor’s ascent to the throne. Simpler problems in simpler times. He had always sought to be Thor’s equal, maybe even once his superior. Now he would have given anything to have that bratty, arrogant side of him back; to slink along by his side like a shadow and save the world with him. But he’d never cared about the world, maybe his job all along had always been to save Thor. 

He pushed away.

“Thor, we have to talk,” he said.

"No, we don't."

Loki looked at him sadly. "Yes, we do.”

Thor avoided his eyes. 

"You've got to stop drinking like this," He said gently. "It's not good. Your friends need you to show up." 

Thor chuckled. “What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve been here, haven’t I? I think that’s the literal definition of showing up.”

“That's nonsense and you know it. I realize you're drunk, but not, I think, as drunk as you want me to believe—no!” he snatched the glass away from Thor who was going to refill it again. “This ends now.”

Fear shimmered behind Thor’s eyes. “Loki.”

“We need to talk,” he repeated firmly.

Thor sighed irritably, “This is stupid."

He waved a massive hand and stomped over to throw himself onto the couch. Loki stood there for a moment, weighing his options. Given the chance he would have taken his time and coaxed his brother from the steel prison he’d built for himself. It was a pointless wish now. They didn't have that kind of time and he couldn’t be so subtle.

Thor was slouched on the couch, glaring into space. Loki sat lightly next to him.

“Thor.”

No answer.

“Thor, listen to me,” he wanted to reach out and take his hand. He didn’t. “I think I know what's wrong but it...may be hard to hear. Promise me you'll listen." He paused for Thor's short nod. "None of this is your fault.”

Thor's eyes filled with tears and Loki instantly wanted to back down. He wanted somebody else to do this for him, he wanted somebody else to be the one to hurt Thor with the truth and bring back painful memories. But there was nobody. It was just him. 

“It’s not,” Loki continued. “You’re not responsible for this mess, Thanos—no, don't flinch, it's just a name—Thanos is. If you believe anything else you're a fool.”

“Am I, though?” Thor grunted. 

“Yes,” Loki said, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. “Absolutely. One hundred percent, certified fool."

Thor glanced at him grumpily. “Wow. Thank you.”

“What happened to running toward your problems?” Loki asked. 

Something ugly flashed across Thor’s face.

“I failed, that’s what happened,” he said aggressively. “I failed twice. And each time I lost something precious, something important to me. I-I lost my people and my planet, and then I lost more of my people, and then I lost _you._ ”

His last words came out in a harsh whisper as if saying them any louder would make them more real. The tears from earlier began to fall and Loki felt his chest twist painfully, his own eyes beginning to prick. Thor had never acknowledged this before. Now that he had, it felt like he'd ripped through stitches and laid the wound bare all over again. 

“Anyway, none of it matters,” Thor said, laughing a bit. He wiped his eyes roughly. “I cut off his head and it still didn’t make a difference. Not a damn thing about it matters.”

“Well, it matters to me,” Loki snapped.

He hadn’t meant to say it so quickly. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all. 

Thor looked at him in surprise and Loki felt the years of pent up frustration and emotion roll out from him like a wave.

“You really think none of it matters,” he said, the words falling out faster than he could think. “But I spent two years in a haze, desperately trying to get back to you. Even when people weren't there for you, I was. I was there."

"What do you mean?" Thor interrupted him, his brows knitting together.

Loki looked at him, no longer trying to hold his emotions in check. "I was there for it all, Thor," he said softly. "The war, the aftermath, the devastation. I followed you through it all because for some reason, my soul wouldn't move on."

Thor was looking at him in stunned silence. Well, Loki thought dully, that was one way to sober him up.

“I should be gone, Thor,” he said quietly. “But for some reason I ended up back here with you. If you can’t at least try to be present, if I can’t help you do that, then I don’t know why I’m here.”

He had only meant to talk some sense into his brother, maybe use some emotional leverage to get him out of his slump. He hadn’t expected to turn things around on himself. He offered Thor a weak smile and ran his finger along his cheek.

Then he left. 

He was still awake when Thor came to bed hours later, smelling of thunder and ozone. He fell asleep gathered to that broad chest, his brother’s fervent words of apology falling on his ears.

*

“Alright, so, so far we have a team going back to New York 2012. A team working on the gauntlet. And a team working on how to wield all five of the damn things once we get them,” Tony clapped his hands together and turned to the room. “Let’s talk about who we’re putting on those teams.”

They were in the conference room again and somehow Carol had managed to convince Thor it was worth his time, which meant Loki had to be there to meet with the remaining Avengers to talk strategy. 

He would rather hurl himself off the Bifrost again.

Since that wasn’t an option, Loki had thrown a fit until Bucky (who apparently went with Rogers but was considerably less annoying) told him to shut up, earning him the grandest of approvals from Okoye. He’d sulked his way to the meeting and promptly settled himself on Thor’s lap for the sole purpose of making everybody in the room uncomfortable. 

Well, except for Scott. He claimed Tony had briefed him earlier and fallen asleep in his chair, his mouth hanging open. 

Other than that, the only interesting thing that had happened thus far was the appearance of two new members of the team; a grouchy raccoon and a bionic alien woman. Neither one of them seemed to care about him, which was both a relief and slightly offensive to him. 

He spent the first half of the meeting deciding how he felt about them. Rocket seemed to be a small bucket of grimy, angry fur. Loki could practically smell the kleptomaniac on him. The bionic alien, Nebula, was angrier than the fur bucket but she was sharp and aggressive. He wouldn’t mind having her at his back in a fight and her indifference towards him was a solid point in her favor. He wouldn’t be worried about either of these two stabbing him at the first chance they got, not that he could say the same for the reverse. Oh, and then there was Stark's best friend, Rhodey. He had some ridiculous name like "War Machine" that he seemed endearingly determined to defend, no matter how stupid the name was. Loki made a mental note of it.

And Tony was still talking.

"Okoye leaves in the morning for the vibranium. Once we have that, we'll be ready to move on with—"

Loki rolled his eyes. How was this meeting so unfathomably boring? 

He wriggled his fingers and tapped into a gentle stream of harmless seidr. Of all the things he'd been dying to do, it was to see just how subtly he could affect the ends of Natasha’s hair. It was loose and fell in little red and blonde waves down her upper back and still looked absolutely ridiculous. It should be one color. He was just beginning to turn the tips red when Thor suddenly picked him up and deposited him onto the couch, jolting his focus. A puff of Nat’s hair burst in the ray of sunlight pouring in from the window. 

_Whoops._

Nat didn’t notice, but Carol did. She held back a grin when she caught his eye. Like Natasha, she was too smart for her own good. Loki frowned. He wasn’t used to being noticed when it wasn’t on his own terms. He wasn’t sure he liked that...

On the other hand, Bucky was too much fun altogether. He was currently sitting in a chair, resting his elbows on his spread knees, and glaring faintly in Loki’s direction like he disapproved of the way he was sitting, which very well may have been the case. 

“Thor, listen—”

“No, _you_ listen!” 

Thor’s deep growl drew him into the conversation at the front of the room. He and Tony were standing chest to chest and glaring. Loki knew his brother had gone a bit mad, but it struck him differently to look at him in a room full of his friends and see how much they’d all crumbled as people and as a team. 

“This is the fastest way, if you just let me speak,” Thor wrenched his wrist out of Tony’s grasp. 

"Put aside that ridiculous ego, white man," Okoye said sharply, tsk-ing at them both. "I want to hear what he has to say."

"Tony, it's okay, let the man speak," Rhodey put a hand on his friend's arm.

Tony held up his hands in surrender. “Whatever you want, big guy, say your piece.”

“Thank you,” Thor nodded at Okoye who smiled that brilliantly white smile.

Loki swept his gaze over his brother affectionately, eyeing his own handiwork in the braids that adorned his blonde hair and beard. Thor had actually woken him up that morning, to his immense surprise. He had also already showered and gotten Loki a cup of tea and it wasn’t even nine in the morning. The small act had made him surprisingly emotional and he’d dragged his brother back into bed for another hour before heading to the shower himself.

It wasn’t a big win, but it was something. His sentimental outburst the night before, embarrassing as it may have been, seemed to have resounded somehow. At least for now.

Thor addressed the room.

“The best way to do this is to send a small team back to get the three stones. Once we get those, the rest will come easily.”

Tony threw his hands up in exasperation. “Yes, that’s what I was saying—”

“So,” Thor bulldozed past him. “I suggest myself, Loki, and Carol for the stones.”

Oh shit. Time to pay attention.

“You want us to let Loki within a hundred yards of these things?” Rogers asked. “No offense, but is that really the wisest plan?”

Loki made a face at him. The urge to shift into a clone of the captain just to annoy him was very strong. He resisted it for Thor's sake.

“I’m right here,” he cut in icily instead, and all eyes turned to look at him. “And yes, it is the wisest plan, or are we doing me the favor of forgetting I’ve handled two of the stones you’re going to be picking up?”

“That’s exactly why I’m concerned,” Rogers countered calmly. “We’ve no reason to trust you.”

Loki let his gaze linger coldly. Ugh. Morals. How utterly boring. Even in his more disheveled state, Loki could see the self-righteousness reflected in his posture, all the way down to the perfect trim on his beard. He was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans and looked like a man who had stubbornly tried to be optimistic for so long that it had turned him into a cynic. 

He was similar to his brother in that regard. 

“So who are you suggesting, Captain,” Loki asked. “Surely not yourself.”

“Frankly? Yeah.”

“You’ll slow us down.” 

“Excuse me?”

“No, he’s right,” Carol chimed in slowly, leaning forward. “I mean, I can’t speak on personal feelings here, but Thor is right about this team. The three of us can withstand the power of a stone far more easily than any of you, and we’re faster. We’re the best choice.”

“I don’t like it,” the captain shook his head. 

“None of us like it, Rogers,” Natasha drawled from the desk. “But we’re kind of at the end of our rope here.”

Loki smiled indulgently at him for effect. Rogers just gave him a flat look. The vague support from Natasha was wildly unexpected, but then again she seemed to be somewhat of a pragmatist. He _was_ the smart choice here, maybe not the most reliable but definitely the most well-equipped. He looked over at her, but she had turned back to the front of the room.

Bucky spoke up from his secluded seat on the side. “So assuming we get the stones from New York, where do we go from there?” 

“Well, that’s the easy part, isn’t it?” Banner’s thin voice cut in from the back of the room. “Once we have time and space it’ll be easy to move through and retrieve the other stones. We just have to figure out when and from where.”

Loki subconsciously sank further into the arm of the couch, away from him. Banner was sitting on a large chunk of scrap metal, molded and rounded into a large seat that looked like it had been specifically designed to fit a Hulk’s ass. He was currently in his human form, diminutive and unassuming, but Loki had no desire to be any closer to him than necessary. 

“This is assuming we get the stones on the first try,” Tony interjected. “The three of you are a powerful team, don’t get me wrong, but let’s talk backup.”

Loki sighed and let Stark’s voice fade into the background where it belonged.

*

They agreed on three teams, Thor told him later to catch him up. Carol would go with them to retrieve the first three stones from New York. Loki had napped through the part where they agreed on backup, so now they would take a total of six people back to New York with them. Thor called it a contingency plan, but Loki was almost certain he’d plucked the words from Rogers’ vocabulary.

Tony and a handful of others would stay behind to work on a gauntlet that could wield it (Thor had suggested Rocket take them to Nidavellir to forge it when they were ready). The remainder of the team would stay back and work on the nuance of wielding the stones. 

“What, you mean we can’t just work this thing like a birthday wish?” Bucky had deadpanned. 

It earned him a soft chuckle from Steve and Natasha had thrown her pencil at him. The pencil met a gruesome end, crunched between Bucky’s metal fingers. Loki remembered that much of the meeting. 

“So what do we do now?” he asked, tugging Thor’s hair out of one of it’s braids and drawing his fingers through the soft strands.

“Well, Stark needs to make a plan for the gauntlet,” Thor said. “And Nat and Steve are talking about how to use the stones once we have them.”

“And?”

“And that means we wait.”

“Oh goody,” Loki drawled, reworking golden threads into a loose braid. “Free time.”

Their free time ended up being less free time and more aimless training. Tony was spread thin between working on effective time travel to get them back to New York in the first place and plans on the gauntlet, so things were a little slow going. Mostly Banner sent Scott back in time until they figured it out. Scott was overall a good sport about it, regardless of the stories he told Loki about having been turned into a baby at one point early on in their testing. Loki determined that the man hadn't stopped talking the entire time. _Exhausting._

Mostly they spent time around the other avengers. Carol was in and out frequently, her work spanned across the universe so she didn’t have any kind of down time, nor did she ask for any. Natasha seemed keen on keeping them together as a family and suggested a lot of group activities including dinners and training sessions. The more time he spent around her the more he found himself softening to her. He would recognize that soul-rending desperation for family anywhere. 

She was also funny as hell. That surprised him. 

Thor himself seemed to have gained that spark back, fueled by the potential that lay before them. It was a good plan. Even Loki was intrigued by the prospect of it all, Ymir help him. He didn’t care much for the rest of the universe, but he did find himself oddly hollow over the Asgardian lives that had been lost. He might even care. Just a little bit.

“What the hell?” 

Thor's voice was a deep rumble in the air.

Loki sighed. He was currently trapped between Natasha’s thighs, his arm twisted beneath him on the mildly squashy training mat. He couldn’t _see_ Thor, but he could hear the frown on his face.

For the record, he was _not_ the one who had suggested a sparring match, but there was literally nothing else to do and Natasha had looked so convincing. He was starting to realize that her appeal as a spy had been in her ability to manipulate with emotion. She caught on fast and whipped it around in similar time before her victim even know what hit them.

He slapped the floor like she'd taught him to.

“Alright, I yield,” Loki managed, his voice coming out slightly strangled. 

Natasha released him and he rolled away from her. 

She was a cunning sparring partner, which was more than he could say for almost anybody else he’d fought. He had sparred with Thor and his friends on Asgard, but they frequently complained about his magic, claiming it was an unfair advantage. Natasha encouraged him to use it, she liked a challenge.

Loki straightened and looked over at his brother. Thor was leaning on the edge of the giant boxing ring, his massive arms bunched and striated against his skin. Whatever softness he’d gained post-snap was gone, replaced with more of what Loki was used to which was all muscle all the time. He still had bad days, and Loki still had to drag him out of bed or force him to shower at times, but at least he wasn’t draining kegs anymore. For the most part, Thor was back to his energetic, infuriatingly optimistic self. 

“It’s nice to see you’re making friends,” Thor smiled at him and the corners of his eyes crinkled in that way that made Loki soft in the knees. 

Usually.

“Fuck you,” he rasped. 

He climbed to his feet as his lungs strained to bring him back to normal. 

“Is it time?” Natasha asked, looking to Thor. 

Loki didn’t miss the tremor in her voice. 

Thor inclined his head. “Indeed it is.”

Loki felt his pulse speed up. Natasha looked sick.

*

_gotta keep your head up and move along move along_  
_gotta keep you head calm and carry on carry on_  
_gotta keep your brights on and cruise along cruise along_  
_gotta keep your head up and move along move along_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Song lyrics are from [Lock Me Up by The Cab](https://open.spotify.com/track/72I5gb06T9KIESon4AWY8S) and [Gotta Be Tonight by Lifehouse](https://open.spotify.com/track/1putHuPOhr099r2wgfTQaX)


	3. Chapter 3

_how long how long will i slide_  
_separate my side i don't_  
_i don't believe it's bad_  
_slit my throat it's all i ever_

~*~

**Avenger's Compound, Upstate New York**

The suits were ugly. 

That was his main complaint about the time travel suits. Quantum realm suits. Whatever the hell they were called. They were comfortable enough, sure, but god, why were they so ugly? Loki slid a couple fingers beneath his collar and tugged to adjust the chest piece.

“That’s it. Any questions?” Tony was standing below the large platform by a control station.

He yawned and earned a poke in the ribs from Natasha.

“Did you listen to any of that?” she asked through her teeth.

"No,” he said bluntly. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, well then we’re in good hands.”

She sighed and pinned her braid up and underneath itself to make room for her helmet to seal. He _had_ actually listened, but it was such a boring plan he could do it in his sleep. He had turned it over in his head a couple times since they first sketched out the steps, anyway, which was more planning than he’d ever done in his life. He was prepared.

“Can we go?” he said to the room.

Nobody paid him any attention. Better than open hostility he supposed, but less entertaining. He’d been paired with Nat for the trip. The captain was standing there next to his brother, evoking a growl from the back of his throat. It irked him that Rogers had been picked for this "time heist" as Scott liked to call it. Loki was sure he would slow them down. He tilted his head and shifted into a perfect mirror image of him. When Rogers looked up and caught his eye, Loki winked salaciously. The captain rolled his eyes. 

The last team was Carol, looking cool and confident next to Nebula.

“Alright, see you soon,” Tony said. “Don’t screw up.”

There was a loud whine of machinery and a pulsing hum that vibrated through his chest. He blinked and they were suddenly whipping through time. Everything was blue. He followed Natasha through the warp and then the world materialized around him. He gasped and tucked into a ball just in time to hit the ground and roll to a stop. Nat landed on her feet and made no effort to hide her amusement. She was grinning down at him.

“Real smooth,” she said, offering him a hand. 

Loki ignored her and picked himself up. They’d landed inside an empty building, a large empty room, to be precise. It looked like it had probably been a conference room at some point. Big windows stretched from floor to ceiling, overlooking a dusty, half destroyed New York City. Explosions shook the ground from a distance.

He’d really done some damage back in the day.

“Alright, so what are we doing?” He asked.

Nat gave him a look. “Look, I know you’re joking, but sometimes you worry me.”

Well, that was just as well, wasn’t it? Loki shot her a lopsided grin and pressed the button on the time bracelet to retract the suit. Beneath the suit he was wearing black tactical gear that Bucky had begrudgingly suggested to him. It made little to no sound and was tough as nails. Not to mention a little tight.

Natasha walked to the windows and peered downward. If everything had gone according to plan, they should have landed right across the street from Stark Tower.

“Are we in the right spot?”

“Looks like it,” Nat confirmed. “And just in time, too. Pierce’s convoy is at the intersection. Let’s go.”

They took the stairs down and out onto the street just as the SHIELD unit pulled in. Loki crouched behind a parked car, Nat hot on his heels.

“It’s the second one in line.” Natasha reminded him.

She was carefully peering through the front windows as he peeked around the back of the car.

He flexed his fingers and tapped into his seidr, sending a few tendrils out into the vehicle. He found two people inside, a driver and Pierce. Perfect. He let the magic flow and latch onto their consciousness and gave a slight tug.

_Go to sleep, simple creatures._

He felt their minds quiet into slumber. Easy does it.

“Did you do it?”

He sighed, “For a spy, you’re not so good on patience are you?”

“Just efficient,” Nat shot back. “Move.”

They snuck across the street as SHIELD agents gathered on the sidewalk, waiting for Pierce to emerge. Loki caused a small distraction with the flick of his wrist and they slipped inside the car. It smelled aggressively of new leather and hand sanitizer.

“They’re getting antsy,” Nat said, observing the perimeter while staying as low as possible in her seat.

Loki rolled his eyes, busy looking over Pierce for details. “Relax. There is very little an arrogant attitude won’t disguise, we’re fine.”

His body shimmered and suddenly he was a squat, ugly little man in a suit.

“How do I look?” he said primly.

“Like a moron,” she said.

Loki smiled and got out of the car. He was met with a dozen or so expectant pairs of eyes, for once not judging him but waiting on him. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be in charge.

“Well,” his voice came out an old man’s rasp. “Don’t all just stand there.”

He straightened his suit and marched past them, leading them into Stark’s tower with all the pomp he could possibly muster. Admittedly, it wasn't hard, he loved drama. They followed him like ducklings in a glorious procession of mindless minions. They entered the tower like a horde. His brother was the first that he saw, big, blonde, and gorgeous, talking amiably with Tony. He was several years younger and several decibels louder than his Thor. Loki felt his breath catch. 

He hadn't accounted for the fact that his brother still caught him off guard in any form. Oops.

Tony was carrying a briefcase that held the Tesseract within, and behind them walked his younger self. He looked himself over critically. It was a good look, he decided. He'd since abandoned the severity of the hairstyle, but everything else held the test of time. He felt a smug sense of satisfaction about it all.

Young Thor frowned when he noticed him.

“—it belongs on Asgard. I’m sorry, you are?”

Thor addressed him directly as he and Tony walked up. He looked so self-assured and commanding, standing there in the sunlight looking every bit the alien on Earth that he was. He towered over Loki in this form and his clear blue eyes bored into him, striking and intelligent.

Loki's mind went blissfully blank.

“This is Alexander Pierce,” Tony said without preamble, saving him the awkward moment. "Giant asshole, head of SHIELD, you know—"

“Mr. Secretary will do,” He managed coolly, regaining his composure. “I’m going to have to ask you to turn the prisoner over.”

He glanced pointedly behind them where his younger self stood, bound and gagged and bored. They met eyes briefly and Loki watched a shimmer of confusion roll across his own face. _That_ might turn into a problem.

“Loki will be answering to Odin himself,” Thor said patronizingly. "Where he will face Asgardian punishment for his crimes."

_You wish, big brother._ Loki addressed the real reason they were there, turning to Tony.

“I’m also going to need that case,” Loki nodded at the briefcase that Tony carried. “It’s been SHIELD property for over seventy years.”

Tony took a step back, trying to be subtle about hiding the case behind his leg and failing spectacularly.

“Look," Tony said, "I know you’ve got a lot of pull, I’m just saying is this really your jurisdiction?”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Stark,” Loki sighed and held out a wrinkled hand. “Let’s not make this a scene. Hand it over.”

“No.” 

Alright, this was taking too long. Loki reached out and grabbed Stark’s wrist.

“Hey, get your hands off me!”

Sure. Loki tightened his grip and sent a pulse of energy through the man’s arm, just enough to make him numb for a moment. Tony dropped the case. It landed on a corner and sprang open, sending the Tesseract spinning across the marble floors of the lobby.

Bingo.

_Oh shit._

There was a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and he saw himself race for the cube. Damn, he really hadn't given himself enough credit. He'd caught on much faster than expected. He should have known the only threat to an otherwise simple plan was himself. He made a split decision and sent a substantial shockwave through Stark, effectively sending him into a minor arrhythmia. Stark dropped to the ground and people swarmed him trying to help.

Humans were so predictable.

Loki whirled and sent a measured blast of energy at himself. He managed a hit, knocking himself over in a sprawling heap. He sprinted for the cube and snatched it up. It pulsed cool beneath his fingertips, a familiar power. His old self frowned at him, not surprised, just curious. He leaned over himself, slightly breathless.

“Stay with Thor.”

He winked and then sent a wave of seidr into the Tesseract. He vanished inside a cloud of smoke.

“Shit!” Nat choked on the word as he landed in the front seat of the car outside. “You scared me. This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Yes, well, I ran into a snag,” Loki said, shifting back into himself. 

“What?”

“I caught on to myself more quickly than I thought, alright?” he snapped.

“Hmm, you against you,” she gave him a sidelong glance. “Sounds like fun.”

“You have no idea,” Loki said dryly. “Did you get rid of them?”

Nat’s eyebrow shot up curiously, but she jerked her head towards the car behind them. “They’re nice and cozy. They should be waking up from their nap about now, right?”

“Eh, more or less,” Loki said ambivalently. He'd put them to sleep with enough seidr to keep them comatose for at least three days. “Weren’t the other two supposed to meet us down here?”

As if on cue, Rogers’ voice rolled in over their earpieces. “Loki, Natasha, what’s your status?”

“Oh, it’s you,” Loki said sourly. “I don’t talk to you. Put my brother on.”

Nat snorted in amusement and put the car into drive. They couldn't just sit there and wait to be discovered. She pulled out into the streets, leaving Stark Tower behind them.

“Loki,” Thor came in with a growl, he was breathing hard.

“Ah, brother,” Loki smiled at his voice. “We have the Tesseract. You two were supposed to beat me to the car. Have you two morons even done anything yet?”

“We ran into a snag and I just had to knock out the Captain from 2012—”

“Well done.”

“—but we have the scepter.”

“I’m shocked,” Loki mused. “What floor are you? We’ll come to you.”

“Um,” Thor’s voice wavered.

Nat was just driving them through the streets, trying to avoid rubble and general chaos as they went. A giant Chitauri Leviathan lay decimated along the street. She took a right turn to avoid it.

“We’re on the tenth floor," Rogers said.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“We’re in the conference room about halfway up the building, you know the one,” Thor said.

Loki sighed. Getting directions to a place he wasn't familiar with was hard enough without trying to understand it through the clumsy examples from his brother or the captain. Plus, he had the Tesseract.

"Thor," he interrupted his brother. "Shut up."

He reached over and grabbed Nat’s shoulder and used the stone to teleport them into the building. This time Nat stumbled when they appeared, but she didn’t fall. She looked a little green.

“Oh dear, I forgot you’re mortal, are you going to die?” he asked curiously.

“I don’t want to do that again,” she groaned. “Please, don’t make me do that again.”

Loki laughed at her and she flipped him off. She recovered quickly, though, and straightened soon enough, brushing her hair out of her face. They walked along the bridge across the two sides of the building. There was chaos swarming below them, they didn’t have a lot of time. Loki took a sharp left and went for the elevator. The number above read ‘5’. 

“They said the tenth floor,” Nat said dryly, pointing.

“Loki!”

They both turned at the loud stage whisper. Thor was waving at them enthusiastically from the landing above. He was wearing the same black tactical gear that Loki had on. It looked almost comical on him, stretching taut across his broad chest and shoulders like it was liable to burst at any moment; that coupled with his long, golden hair that Loki had lovingly twisted into a crown along his head that morning. He looked like something in one of those graphic novels Scott had introduced him to.

He turned to Nat who looked apprehensive.

“No, don’t,” she warned, holding up a finger and starting to back away.

But he’d already touched her arm and accessed the stone. Thor laughed triumphantly and hauled Loki into a hug when they appeared on the landing above. A little heady off their success, Loki kissed him and nipped at his lip, earning a grin.

“Oh good, you still have the scepter,” Nat said weakly, looking at the case in the captain's hand.

“Any word from Carol or Nebula?”

“We were supposed to just meet her on that roof when we’re done,” Steve said. “Can you get us there with that thing?”

Loki shimmered into his visage and parroted his words. “Can you get us there with that thing?”

Steve really could look put upon at the drop of a hat. Instead of responding to the jab, Loki was disappointed when the captain simply sighed expansively. Boring.

“Come brother,” Thor clapped him on the back. “Now is hardly the time for tricks.”

Loki shifted back and smiled lazily at Steve, egging him on. Natasha stared between all three of them, shaking her head.

“Children,” she said. “I’m working with children.”

The elevator dinged and revealed a group of SHIELD agents. God, how were there so many of them? Time to go. Loki hastily reached out and clamped onto all three of them and teleported them out.

The rooftop in question was supposedly where Carol was. She’d been radio silent the whole time so either things had gone terribly wrong, or—

They landed in a heap. Thor was the first to his feet, hopping up, his golden hair glinting in the sun. Other than the massive destruction that surrounded them, it was a really nice day. Loki sat up and looked around with a frown. It was a little rooftop garden, very neatly maintained and manicured, strangely untouched. 

“Oh, hey guys,” Carol was crouched on the ground next to Nebula who had her head cradled her her hands. “Nice of you to show up.”

Nat hustled over to them and began asking Nebula questions in a low voice.

“What happened to her?” Thor nodded at the blue alien woman.

She was sitting on the ground shaking her head, her eyes far away. Loki watched her carefully, but she just rocked back and forth, breathing heavily, saying words under her breath.

“I’m not sure what happened, I think we’re gonna need Tony’s expertise on it,” Carol said. “Did you get the stones?”

“We did.” Steve answered. “Did you?”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Carol gave him a small smile, procuring it in the palm of her hand. "Took a little convincing, but I'm a convincing person."

Loki let their words fade into the background as he continued to watch Nat talk to Nebula, her voice a series of rapid questions. Whatever happened, it was serious. He read Nebula as the fierce, removed type and she certainly didn't have public breakdowns for no reason. Nat hugged her close and looked up at them.

“Guys, we need to get back,” she said anxiously. “We have a serious problem. Loki?”

Loki shook his head. “That isn’t me.”

“That’s me,” Carol looked around at them all. “I hope we all like holding hands.”

*

“He knows.”

They were in the kitchen debriefing. Nebula had landed in a rage, coherent words finally tumbling out of her mouth, screaming for Tony to help her—something about taking her mind apart—and then she had locked herself in a room. Nobody but Carol or Tony were allowed to talk to her. 

Loki’s eyes were burning and he felt his eyelids begin to droop. He wanted nothing more than to fall into bed but his brain was going a million miles an hour. From what he understood, Thanos now knew they were after the stones and somehow Nebula was involved. Tony had tried to go over some solutions with them, but Loki hadn’t had the mind to absorb it. His knowledge on bionic alien women was limited, at best.

“If I might suggest the obvious,” he said in the next breath of silence. “Why not just dispose of her?”

You could have heard a pin drop. He sighed tiredly and leaned his palms into the counter. No wonder humanity never won wars. 

A dozen or so sets of eyes blinked stupidly back at him. 

“Loki, we can’t just kill teammates,” Natasha said. 

“And why not?” Loki asked her. “She’s proven herself a threat, can’t you see that?”

“Uhhh, yeah, maybe. But it’s also wrong?” Rocket paused his pilfering of the kitchen cabinets to frown at him. “I mean, I know you’re like, thousands of years old—I get that you’ve seen some shit—but even you gotta admit that’s pretty cold-blooded.”

“Send her off-world, then, but she doesn’t belong here. Thanos is coming. We’ve lost our advantage,” Loki wanted to slam his palms against the counter in frustration. “She is a danger every moment she is in our presence. She’s a risk to everyone.”

“She’s family,” Nat said emphatically. 

Loki stared at them all.

“I remember a time when you were in the same situation,” Thor spoke up after a moment. “You didn’t choose so differently yourself, brother.”

Loki felt his throat tighten. The words were spoken gently, hardly above a whisper, but they cut him deeply.

“That’s different,” he snapped.

“Is it?”

Loki looked at him sharply, glaring even as his eyes pricked. How dare Thor insinuate he had made the same choice, they were nothing alike. How was he supposed to have known his moron of a brother would go off and get himself captured? It wasn’t his fault he’d had to improvise a plan out of nothing. 

Thor’s blue eyes were steady, burning with fierce affection. Loki glared back at him, hating him for it, hating the knowledge that he would make the same choice if he had to do it all over again. Thor may as well have pierced him through the heart.

“It’s not,” he hissed. 

There was a crash and Rocket came tumbling down from a cabinet. The entire room jumped, reminding Loki that he and Thor were not the only ones in the room. 

He spun on his heel and stormed from the kitchen.

*

The thing about human liquors was that they just didn’t hit the same way Asgardian drinks did. So far, whiskey was the only thing that came moderately close that he didn’t hate. He took a big gulp and let it burn the back of his throat.

He’d managed to calm down considerably from his earlier outburst. He didn’t exactly understand why he’d been so heated, he’d studied time travel and its implications back on Asgard. It wasn’t his favorite topic, but he remembered enough to know the potential problems with it. Thanos catching on to their plan had never been outside of the realm of possibility. 

He had almost expected it.

And that was the thing, he was almost certain Thanos knowing about the plan meant nothing when they were three stones ahead of him. Hell, Loki had pulled off grander schemes with worse odds before. 

He couldn’t be bothered. 

Or he shouldn’t have been, but he couldn’t get rid of the hollow feeling in his chest. Maybe it wasn't the threat of Thanos at all. Maybe it was just acknowledging that he would easily throw everything into the fire if it meant he could save Thor. He wasn't sentimental. It wasn't supposed to matter to him, but deep inside somewhere he cared about somebody and it was worth more than his life. And now that life was at stake again in the face of their current mission...

It was all so overwhelming.

He groaned and flopped backwards onto the bed. It was a warm night and the balcony doors were open, flung wide to give him a full view of the night sky that was filled with stars blinking lazily at him. He glared at them and his heart tapped a rapid beat against his ribs. 

There was the faint ring of metal in the air. He knew the sound. Sure enough there was a rush of air and a muffled thump on the balcony, the telltale signs of his brother.

“Loki?”

A large shadow fell across him. He remained splayed across the bed, staring at nothing. Maybe it was just a bit dramatic but he didn’t know how to deal with what he was feeling right now, or indeed why he was feeling anything at all. What did people normally do when faced with this kind of thing? Cry? Scream? Have a full meltdown in the middle of the Avenger’s compound? 

“Loki, are you alright?”

Loki smiled blandly. “Splendid.”

Thor walked around the edge of the bed and set Stormbreaker down on its head. He brought the smell of earth and lightning with him. Loki inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

“I’m not in the mood to talk,” he warned.

Thor said nothing. Loki found it odd, as Thor tended to lord it over him whenever he got the least bit emotional. It was a thing they did. Loki stabbed Thor with his knives. Thor made fun of his emotions. It had always been something of a game between them. For many reasons, Loki was glad Thor didn’t seem to be playing right now. 

The mattress sank as Thor sat next to him. Even with his eyes closed Loki thought his brother seemed larger in the darkness, somehow. He wanted to curl up in it and never come out again.

“Flying always puts me in a better mood,” Thor suggested, the hint of a grin on his voice.

Loki opened his eyes a slit to look at him, incredulous. “Pass.”

Thor’s deep rumbling laugh made him smile a little. He loved the sound. 

“Come here,” he almost pleaded, reaching for him. 

Thor came willingly, lying down lengthwise next to him and propping himself up with an elbow. Loki took a couple soft strands of blonde between his fingers, twirling them gently. He tucked them behind Thor’s ear and brought his hand to caress his brother’s jawline, brushing through the recently trimmed beard. Loki had seen a fair bit of the universe in the past thousand years or so and Thor remained the most beautiful of all the things he’d seen. He would always be that way.

A swell of fondness stole the breath from his lungs. He pushed himself up on his forearm to catch Thor’s lips with his.

“I love you,” he said softly when he pulled away. 

“I love you, too,” Thor gazed at him, amused. “And you’re trying to distract me.”

“From what?” 

“From talking to you,” Thor said, dropping a soft kiss on his forehead. “About your _feelings_.”

“Ugh,” Loki rolled away from him. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Loki gave him a look. Thor really was as intelligent as they came but sometimes Loki understood why people thought he was irreparably thick.

“Is it because of Thanos?”

His chest squeezed unpleasantly. Loki sat up and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Why on earth would you think that?”

He picked up his glass and went to the door, fully intending to bring it to the kitchen where he could escape his brother’s incessant prodding, maybe even find more whiskey.

“Loki.”

He didn’t know what made him pause; the sudden, icy grip in his chest, a slight twinge near his heart. The doorknob was cool beneath his palm. His vision went oddly blurry and it was hard to breathe. 

He didn't know when Thor got up, but suddenly he was there, his calloused fingers prying the glass from his fingers. Strong arms pulled him against a broad chest, pressing him close and grounding him. Loki curled his fingers into the softness of Thor's shirt, the familiar salt and musk of his skin filling his lungs as Thor wound a large, gentle hand through his hair. 

When he heard his name, light as breath on Thor's lips, he couldn’t stop the sob that welled up in him and somewhere inside a dam broke. It was like being dragged under by a rip tide and slammed mercilessly against the rocks, all he could do was hold on and wait for it to pass. 

It didn’t matter that he didn’t know why, Thor seemed to understand. He held him close and pressed kisses to his hair, murmuring nonsense comforts until Loki had exhausted himself. 

He fell asleep curled in Thor’s chest that night, breathing in the soft warmth he found there and clinging to his presence with all the desperation of a man who knew he had everything to lose.

*

Everybody seemed to have congregated in the kitchen again the next morning. Loki’s lip curled in distaste when he walked in, fully having expected them to have come and gone.

“That’s a walk of shame if I ever saw one,” Natasha teased as soon as she saw him.

She was perched on a stool, hunched over a bowl of cereal and holding back a grin. 

“I don’t know what that is,” Loki said airily. 

Natasha snorted. Loki rolled his eyes and began assembling things to make coffee. He knew he looked ridiculous drowning in Thor’s clothing, but again, he hadn’t expected anybody to be in the kitchen this late in the morning. Frankly, if his relationship with Thor made people uncomfortable in any way he was happy to treat their feelings with blatant disregard.

“Ah, my friends! Good morning!” Thor appeared in the doorway. 

If Loki was obvious that morning, Thor was a million times worse, standing there shirtless in all his muscle-bound glory with a bird’s nest of hair and a pair of red sweatpants slung low across his hips. Loki smiled indulgently at him and turned back to the french press, but not before catching Natasha’s eye. She was grinning at him now, a wolfish thing that showed far too many teeth to be considered friendly. He threw a coffee bean at her and she caught it. 

“Hey, Thor,” Carol piped up. “That looks like everybody I need, do you mind if we start while you eat breakfast? Don’t answer that, I’m already getting started.”

She pushed herself off the couch where she’d been sitting next to Bucky. Loki leaned back against the counter and wrapped his hands around his coffee mug and tried not to be distracted by Thor’s hand pressing against his hip as he passed. He craned his neck to steal a kiss anyway.

“Tony is with Nebula right now, so I’m going to update you,” Carol’s fingers danced across the touchpad she was holding and the paneled holoscreens flickered to life against the wall. 

“We’re three stones away from our goal and we have three left; reality, soul, and power,” she waved to each one as she named them. “Once we get a time stamp and a location on each of the remaining stones, we’re basically in the home stretch.”

“Basically we have a lot less time than we thought we did,” Bruce said. “So we gotta move.”

Loki hadn’t even realized he was there. He was sitting at the desk and melting into the background, dressed in cargo pants and a rumpled button up that barely classified as a shirt in Loki’s opinion. 

“Rocket, Okoye, how are we doing with the gauntlet?” Carol looked down at Rocket first.

The racoon was crouched on the floor, a mess of electrical parts scattered across the floor in front of him.

“Uhhh, Tony’s got the design down, we just gotta go to space and forge it so it can withstand all the stones at once,” Rocket waved a roll of tape towards Thor. “Right, Thor? Thor knows, it’s where we got his new axe.” 

Loki glanced at Thor just as his hand jerked and he spilled creamer all over the counter. He frowned and passed him a towel.

“Um, yes, I gave Stark the coordinates ages ago.”

“Right,” Rocket clicked his tongue and pointed at him. “That big guy that lives there is pretty handy with a forge, I give it, eeeeh, about a day before we’re back ready to kick ass? Shouldn’t be hard, the big guy and I are great friends now.”

"The metals should hold up to the process," Okoye added. "I've cross-referenced it with everything I can find in Shuri's lab notes. If I understand them correctly it should work perfectly."

Loki listened with half an ear, watching as Thor spent a little too long mopping up the mess he’d made on the counter. Nobody else seemed to notice, but he did. The rest of the room carried on. 

“Perfect,” Carol turned to Steve and Bucky who were on the couch she’d vacated. “Where are you guys at?”

The Captain stifled a yawn. Even though his hair was still perfectly in place, he looked like he’d been dragged through a stable and forced to stay up for three days straight. Bucky didn’t look much better next to him, although Loki didn’t know if he’d ever seen the man without deep purple bruises beneath his eyes. Maybe he just looked like that...

He zoned out as Steve went into their research into how to wield the stones. Apparently there was some finesse required to use all of the stones at once. It made sense. Each of the three he’d used required a little bit different kind of strength but it was nothing strenuous, at least for him. Which brought up the question—

“Who’s wielding the gauntlet?” he asked. 

There was a pregnant pause. He raised a brow and waited, he could practically feel the coffee in his hands getting cold. Natasha cleared her throat and ducked her head back into her cereal. Okoye clicked her tongue but didn't say anything. 

“Perhaps a question for another time,” he said mildly. “What is Stark doing with the daughter of Thanos?”

“Apparently Thanos has a way to access her memories,” Natasha said. “He was able to access her memories from the future when she landed in New York.”

"You mean her brain is some kinda hard drive?" Rocket asked in astonishment. "Yikes."

“He doesn’t have a way to travel to the future yet, we still have time,” Steve said, an edge to his voice the only sign he was starting to get stressed. 

Carol merely looked focused. Loki didn't know if she had the capacity to be stressed out when she dealt with calamity on a universal scale every day. Not a whole lot would faze her, that was obvious. He envied that much about her.

“If Tony manages to give her a way to gain control, we’ve got a shot,” Carol agreed. 

“Do you think he can?” Bucky asked quietly. 

He was met with a resounding yes.

Loki rolled his eyes. Nebula wouldn’t be a problem if she wasn’t part of the team anymore. It really was that simple, he could just pop her off-world, somewhere nice and leave her there. Voila, problem solved. He’d even do them the favor of not killing her, like he’d initially intended. 

But this team worked pivotally around sentiment.

He drained the rest of his coffee and stole Thor’s bowl of cereal from him. If everything went according to the newest version of the plan, he and Thor were going on an adventure later that day.

*

_i'm calling you from the future_  
_to let you know we've made a mistake_  
_there's a fog from the past that's giving me_  
_giving me such a headache_  
_if i can live through this_  
_i can do anything_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Song lyrics taken from [Otherside by Red Hot Chili Peppers](https://open.spotify.com/track/3CeYdUfGPCjKMDYyI1PpCh) and [Champion by Fall Out Boy](https://open.spotify.com/track/4kIsMXtFDPa1MqAxwErURx) respectively.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this in the throes of a hangover in Vegas. I just want y'all to know how much you mean to me.

_angels with silver wings_  
_shouldn't know suffering_  
_i wish i could take the pain for you_  
_things get damaged_  
_things get broken_  
_i thought we'd manage_  
_but words left unspoken_  
_left us so brittle_

~*~

**Avengers Compound, Upstate New York**

As it turned out, Bruce wasn’t kidding when he’d said they would need to move fast. By the time He’d finished Thor’s cereal they had collectively agreed that the reality stone was the next best bet. He and Thor were going. 

“Thor, how far back in time are we going again?”

Thor had him pinned against the wall in the hallway, a knee between his legs and his hands teasing the hem of his oversized shirt. Loki scrambled to keep his wits as Thor’s tongue swiped at his neck. 

“Thor!” He laughed helplessly. “Stop it, this is important.”

“We’re going back to when I brought Jane home,” Thor said distractedly. “You should be able to take the Aether from her without problem.”

“Ugh, do you have to say her name?”

Loki cringed away when he nipped at his earlobe. 

“Oh, Loki,” Thor murmured. “You’re not still jealous, are you?”

“Well, yes,” Loki said, even as the rumble of Thor’s voice shot goosebumps down his arms.

He pushed gently at his brother’s massive chest to put some space between them. Thor looked put out but kept his hands on Loki’s hips. 

“Are you really still upset?” Thor asked seriously. 

His thumb rubbed small circles along the crest of Loki’s hip bone, thrilling him and making it hard to think. Mostly. He was still largely bitter about the timeline they were going back to and he wasn’t keen to relive it. In fact, the more he thought about it the more he hated it. 

“Yes.”

“Loki,” Thor whined.

The urge to roll his eyes was magnificent. Yes, maybe Thor had been banished to earth and _maybe_ he’d tried to kill him at the time, but that was no excuse. Thor was his, body and soul, and he should have known that.

He pressed his lips together. “It took you three days.”

“I think it was more than that.”

“It wasn’t.” 

Thor had the grace to look apologetic. 

“Gross, you two,” Natasha’s low rasp was unmistakable. 

Thor blushed but Loki didn’t. He looked over at her and was met with that smirking slash of a grin she seemed to perpetually have ready for him. She had changed out of her pajamas into her usual fatigues and tank and her hair was back in a braid. 

“You're not allowed to judge me when your hair that looks like that,” Loki said dryly.

“Yeah well, my hairdresser got dusted,” she joked humorlessly. “There’s not much I can do about that.”

“Allow me.”

Loki reached out and tugged at his seidr, letting it wrap around her hair for a moment before he twisted his wrist. Thor hummed appreciatively as Nat’s hair shifted and then settled into a silvery white-blonde that fell to her shoulders. 

Nat, who had stood very still throughout the whole thing, reached up tentatively to touch it. It was still in a neat braid. 

“I swear, Loki, if you did something ridiculous,” she warned.

"Oh, this looks wonderful," Thor reassured her seriously. "Once, when we were children, our friend Sif had the most beautiful golden hair. And then Loki played a trick on her to turn it black—"

"It looks better on her anyway." Loki said dismissively. 

"—we never managed to turn it back. She's been mad at him ever since."

Loki rolled his eyes, folding his arms across his chest as Thor pulled him into an affectionate side hug. It was true, she'd never gotten over it and had made it a personal mission of hers to dog his every move after that. But he had never liked Sif in the first place, so he would do it again if given the chance. And the black _did_ look better on her. 

Nat continued to eye him suspiciously, but seemed to have relaxed a little. Bucky chose that moment to walk up and join the group, his solemn, puppy-like eyes taking in the scene without so much as a blink. 

“I like the hair,” he said promptly, waving at her new look. The pair of fingerless gloves in his hand flopped around with the movement. 

Natasha gave him a small smile and quick side hug. "It looks good, then? Loki did it."

“So that’s a thing you can do, then?” Bucky didn’t ask it like a question. 

Loki regarded him. He didn’t know how to feel about the captain’s lover, but he did seem to have more of a sense of humor. 

“Among other things,” he responded vaguely.

Bucky snorted out a dry laugh. “Yeah, so I’ve heard. Hey, good luck today.”

They walked off down the hallway towards the conference room, Natasha’s arm linked with his metal one. They were no doubt headed to continue their work with the mind stone. The captain had been working around the clock to figure out just how to wield them and how to plan for the inevitable fallout of bringing back half the universe.

Boring work, in other words.

He and Thor left shortly. Loki shifted them into Asgardian armor. They hardly wanted to stand out in black tactical gear from Midgard while sneaking around Asgard in the past. A tiny pang hit him in the chest when he remembered that his home no longer existed, but then he supposed he hadn't considered it home in a long time. Still, he had to push the butterflies down at the thought of returning.

Clearly he wasn’t as nervous as Thor.

His brother disappeared for a little bit. It felt like he was stalling, and with good reason. Loki was just about to go check on him when he emerged from the bathroom with a giant smile on his face. Loki sat down on the bed with a thump and stared. He was horrified for the span of two solid seconds before he launched into a tirade. Thor's long hair had been viciously cut, hacked at with what Loki could only assume was a dull pair of kitchen scissors. He had done a marvelously terrible job of it. It looked almost as bad as the gladiator hack job he’d gotten on Sakaar, only this time the little nicks along his crown were his own doing. 

"What have you done!" 

Thor smiled just a little too brightly. "It was time for a change, brother."

He had apparently lost all ability to form coherent thought so he simply gaped at him. Eventually he calmed down enough to be coaxed from their quarters. He sulked at Thor’s heels as they walked to the hangar, glaring at the edges around Thor's hairline that he’d cleaned up. He wished he could just grow it all back for him without getting pummeled. 

Tony appeared to see them off, looking as bedraggled as the rest, but happy. Loki listened with half an ear when Thor asked how he'd fared with Nebula's situation. Tony smiled tiredly. He’d managed to give Nebula control over her memories without killing her. Bionic brain surgery...it had to be a first on this little planet. He followed them into the hangar where the giant platform stood dormant.

The stones were kept in a briefcase that Tony kept locked for good measure. The locks clicked heavily as he flicked them open and raised the lid. Thor took the time stone and it disappeared within his giant fist. Loki took the Tesseract, but not before seeing a flash of distrust flicker through Tony’s face. 

“Oh, relax,” he muttered to the man as they passed and stepped onto the platform.

Tony’s eyes narrowed, but he tossed their coordinates and their time stamp up onto the screen, though he needn’t have. They knew exactly when and where they were going. 

They faced each other on the platform. Thor looked confident as ever, standing there looking at him intently. They hadn't talked about this mission in depth with one another, although he supposed the probably should have. Losing Asgard was a wound that would still be raw no matter how the years passed. They both know what it felt like and talking about it had seemed laughably trivial. 

As Thor stared at him now, he could see the forced steel in his gaze. His earnest blue eyes had never been good at hiding his emotions. Loki thought they rather gave away too much sometimes. He looked away, glancing at Tony. 

“Time then space,” Tony mouthed, giving them a thumbs up. 

Thor procured the time stone and stepped close. They were chest to chest now, Loki could taste his brother's breath on his lips as strong arms wrapped around his waist. Loki returned the gesture, taking comfort in the warmth of being pressed against him. He was fairly certain it wasn't necessary to be so close in order to stay together for this, but for once he wasn't ready to complain.

A brilliant flash of green engulfed them.

Instantly, a rush filled his ears and an invisible force dragged at him, yanking him against a current. He held on to keep from being ripped away, his fingers digging into Thor’s back until he could feel the strands of his muscle working, steel beneath skin. And suddenly they were there. The rush in his ears died immediately and they were standing in a bare patch of woods. The site of the Avenger’s compound. 

Thor nudged him encouragingly. Loki took a deep breath and used his seidr to open the Tesseract. 

This time they were dunked under water without warning, a swift gasp and a punch of air from his lungs, only to break the surface a moment later. Thor staggered but remained upright. 

Loki recovered first.

“Over here,” he hissed.

He grabbed a handful of red cloak and all but dragged his brother behind one of the large pillars that lined the halls of Asgard. Thor pressed close as a band of guards marched by. 

Loki peered around the stone after they passed. 

“So, where to?” he asked when he’d determined it was safe to move. 

“Well, Jane will be in mother’s chambers by now,” 

Loki’s brain went into overdrive. Asgard. The Aether. How had he not put the two together?

“What?” he hissed as soon as his brain screeched to a halt. “You brought us back to this day? She was on Asgard for days and you chose _this_ day?!”

“Yes, I thought you knew?”

“No, of course not, you moron, otherwise i wouldn't have come,” Loki snapped. He might have been told at some point, but he couldn't be expected to have paid attention.

His next words were cut off as Thor’s hand covered his mouth and he was shoved against the pillar again. He protested, but Thor wasn't paying attention to him. 

“—please make sure to get some soup for Loki. And if you would, there is a stack of books I set aside for him in the library I think he might like.”

Frigga’s voice had always been like a balm, light and strong and sweet. Loki felt his heart skip at the same moment Thor’s breath caught. They remained frozen there, hardly daring to breathe for fear of being found and reasons beyond. 

“You go on without me.” Loki strained against Thor's hand to watch as his mother shooed her handmaidens on to take care of her wishes. She folded her hands serenely as they hurried out of sight and then she turned. 

_Oh, shit._

Thor was already moving when Loki tugged at his arm _hard._ Neither one of them should have tried, their mother was too quick. 

“My darlings.”

Both of them almost snapped to attention. Loki involuntarily shrank behind Thor. 

“Mother,” Thor said stiffly. 

Frigga smiled at them, soft and radiant. Loki felt heart ache at the sight of it. He missed her so much.

“You are not mine though, are you?” she continued.

Thor spluttered in indignation. Of course they were hers, whose else could they be? 

"I was raised by witches, boy, I see with more than eyes and you know that,” Frigga responded gently, catching his cheek in her delicate hand. “You're mine from the future and another time, aren't you? Oh my sweet boys, the years have not been kind to you, I think.” Her gaze settled on Loki, fierce and intelligent, just like Thor’s. “Loki, sweetheart, why do you hide from me?”

He didn’t know. 

“Mother.” He stepped forward and tried his best not to cry when palm of her hand cupped his face.

“My children,” she said. “Why are you here?”

Thor’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder, almost absently, but his grip was too firm. “I—we cannot stay, mother.”

He had never heard his brother sound less sure in his life, he could feel the hesitation as he pulled them away, but Loki wrenched out of his grip. Thor didn’t try to stop him.

“Can we talk?” he choked out, reaching for his mother blindly. “I really need to talk to you.”

She caught him like she always had. “Hush, little one, we can talk.”

Thor didn't even pretend to try and stop them this time. They followed her quickly through the halls as she brought them to her tapestry room. They spoke with her one at a time. Nothing was secret between him and Thor, they could have gone together. Somehow it felt better to each go alone. 

“—his head was over there, his body over there.”

Loki paced back and forth outside the door, his footsteps falling silently against the stone. 

“I was just standing there,” he heard Thor say roughly. “Just an idiot with an axe.”

Loki squeezed his eyes against the image as Frigga’s voice rebuked him firmly. That day had extinguished Thor like a candle in a stiff wind. The image stuck with him, another painful piece to add to a growing list of nightmares. 

When Thor emerged his face was damp, but he was holding Mjolnir and a fire burned behind his eyes once more. He looked like the storm again. Loki’s heart clenched painfully, he had always been weak for the wildness in him.

“She is waiting for you, brother,” Thor grasped the back of his neck in a calloused hand. “I will return in a moment.”

His eyes burned. His lips were soft and warm when they brushed against his and then he was gone. 

Loki watched him leave on swift feet and then turned and walked into the room.

Frigga was waiting for him on a small chaise surrounded by filmy fabric that diffused the light in a golden haze. Seeing her alive and well was nearly unbearable. She had been ripped from him without warning and he’d been given no freedom to say goodbye. His throat caught and he remembered wishing for his own death that day, lying in his cell wishing somehow something would pierce him through the heart and let him drift off to any other kind of pain.

She smiled and he hesitated, afraid to touch her. Did she know?

“Mother, there is much I want to say, but you must know—” he fumbled the words but she held up a hand to silence him. 

“Come here, darling.” 

He went easily, reaching for her like a child. Her fingers smoothed his hair away from his face.

“I will hear nothing of what happens today,” she told him. “You are here to fix your future, not mine.”

Loki’s vision blurred as he whispered, “You know?”

She just smiled, serene and perfect as always. “What was it you wished to talk to me about?”

There wasn’t enough time for everything he wanted to say. 

He wanted to say that he loved her—he wished with all his heart he could keep today from happening. He wanted to tell her his pain from the past, his fear for the future. He wanted to tell her everything she couldn’t possibly know about her golden son who had captured his heart so completely he never wanted to know anything else. 

His tongue tried to form the words inside his head and failed them all. Silvertongue, indeed. 

“Always locked away inside that brilliant head of yours,” she said, a bit sadly. “Would you listen to my words instead?”

Loki nodded. 

“Listen carefully, and promise me you won’t forget,” she implored him as her fingers chased a stray hair from his brow. “I am _so_ proud of you. I always have been. You are more thoughtful and more tactful than your brother will ever be and—” she hushed him as he opened his mouth to defend Thor. “And you complement each other well. I hope you see it in your heart that you were meant to rule together.”

“I—” Loki felt his throat dry at her words. She saw many things, some he knew and some he didn’t, but his precautions surrounding his relationship with Thor were airtight. He had shielded them. She couldn’t have known.

“Darling, no spell in the world could disguise the love you share with him,” she said knowingly, a faint smile on her lips. “And for all your cunning, subtlety is hardly your brother’s strong suit.”

“I thought I did so well,” he whispered, smiling wryly.

“You’re meant for each other,” her touch was warm as she tilted his chin back up to look at her. “You have a bond stronger than the foundations of the universe itself.”

Loki barked a nervous laugh, his eyes a little damp. He had always had her approval, but he never thought in his wildest dreams he would get a blessing for this. 

“Your father wished for this, you know,” she said tentatively. 

He felt his lip curl back involuntarily. Absurd.

“He may have been terrible at showing it, and Ymir knows we fought about his methods,” she said. “But he meant for you both to rule, side by side, I think. At least it started out that way.”

“He told me my birthright was to die,” Loki said bitterly. 

"Did I ever tell you what he said when he brought you home?” Frigga whispered, there were tears on her lower lashes. “He thought you were so undeniably clever, you were only a babe and you had shifted into the likeness of an Aesir child to appease him. You impressed him. And he thought that maybe one day you would be clever enough to stay Thor’s reckless hand.”

“And what did you think?” Loki asked suddenly. He had never thought to ask. “When Odin brought me back, what did you think of me?”

She smiled. “I was terrified, of course. I knew nothing about frost giants and I know chaos when I see it. It was there in your eyes from the beginning.” She placed her fingers over his heart. “But I loved you dearly. And despite my lack of knowledge you grew up fierce, and brave, and smart, and I couldn’t be prouder.”

Thor’s footsteps sounded down the corridor. Their mother was right, subtlety was not his strong suit. Loki felt tears prick at his eyes. It was time to go. 

“I don’t want to go,” he said softly, nearly swallowing the words with his unwillingness to speak them aloud.

“Oh, but you must,” she said. “Your future is long and, dare I say it, even happy. You deserve happiness, Loki. You always have.”

He looked at her shrewdly. "You looked into the future, didn't you?” 

He was taken aback. The Fates would never have allowed it.

“Just a peep for my children,” she winked at him. “I’d like to have seen them stop me.”

Her hands squeezed his, delicate but strong. Warmth settled in his chest. It wasn’t enough, no amount of time with her would ever be enough, but this was better than he could have ever hoped for.

Thor returned and she gathered them into her arms one last time, kissing each one of them on the cheek and giving them a parting word before sending them off with a smile and a wink. Loki teleported them back to the Avengers compound site and Thor pulled him close and took them forward to the present. 

They landed right back where they started on the platform. The weight of it all hit Loki in the chest like a stone. He gripped Thor, clinging to him long after he could have stepped away. The heavy beat of his heart grounded him like it always had. Thor hummed deep in his chest and hugged him close, his own grief clear in the strength of his grip and the kisses he pressed to Loki's hair. 

It was only when Tony cleared his throat from the control panel that they broke apart.

“Took you long enough. Ten seconds, really? What did you do, take a vacation while you were there?”

He sounded irritated, but Loki had spent enough time around the Avengers by now to spot the relief in the slack around his eyes. Tony Stark played it cool, but he was a gigantic softie just like his brother. Idealistic. Romantic. He may as well have had worry lines scribbled across his face in big, sloppy crayon for what it was worth to Loki. He let the snarky comment pass. Thor hopped off the platform and dropped the red reality stone into his hand. 

“Got what we were looking for,” he rumbled. 

Loki followed him a little less energetically as Tony peered at the stone critically. It was a lot of power for him to be handling so closely.

“Great, well, that leaves two stones,” he tossed the stone and caught it. “You might want to dip into the conference room, the rest of the fam is there ready for the time stone. I think they’re getting cranky.” 

“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” Loki drawled. “Not after ten seconds.”

Tony just looked at him, not quite amused but not mad by any stretch. The three of them made their way to the conference room where the team had, in fact, congregated. Carol gave them a grin and a high five each when they reported a successful trip. 

Loki dropped into the nearest seat he could find, spent.

Okoye was sitting with her legs splayed leaning forward and grasping the spear she seemed to carry everywhere. She looked very serious as she watched Tony walk in with the stone. Her eyes glittered in anticipation.

"The gauntlet is ready," she said, once Thor made it through the door. 

“I guess that means we gotta move,” Rocket surmised.

The prototype was lying on the desk next to a set of plans and the Vibranium they would use in the forge on Nidavellir. Rocket looked longingly at the gauntlet that Tony stubbornly refused to let him touch. Tony hummed his disapproval from the doorway.

“Paws off, Care Bear,” he said. “We only get one shot with that thing.”

“I thought you Avengers were all about trust,” Rocket griped, scratching behind an ear. “You know, family and all that shit.”

“Yeah, which means boundaries, so don’t touch my stuff,” Tony pointed at him. 

Loki looked away as Rocket folded his arms and sulked. It had been a long day already and he had just left his mother to die. Again. He wanted nothing more than to go to bed and put this day behind him, but he couldn’t. He noticed with growing disgust that he seemed to have developed a more outspoken conscience while hanging around the Avengers. 

How utterly disappointing.

Thor sank into the couch next to him and pulled him into his side. He wasn’t the only one who was ready to retire for the day. 

“We have two left,” Steve was in front of the holoscreens looking pensive. “Once we have all five we’re gonna need to move fast. I don’t know how much time we have now that Thanos knows we’re on the move.”

“One day,” Nebula said. “Maybe. Your planet has very short days.”

Loki nodded in agreement, the days on Earth were extremely short. 

“Well, my team is up,” Tony clapped his hands together. “You all packed? You have your snacks? Maybe a couple movies picked out?”

“Yeah, I got Hot Tub Time Machine, Back to the Future, and 2012,” Rhodey played along with the ease of somebody who had clearly been friends with Tony Stark for far too long. “That covers time travel and the apocalypse. I know you like a little bit of a theme.”

Tony snapped his fingers. “Good thinking, Rhodes. That means you’re driving, Ranger Rick, let’s go.”

Rocket followed them out, pulling on a backpack that looked like it had been duct taped together too many times and muttering “it’s my ship, of course i’m fuckin’ driving.” Bruce followed them slowly. Loki had almost forgotten he existed, but he'd been in the background quietly working on the mechanics of hosting the stones within the gauntlet. Loki wondered absently whether Hulk had a say in when he came out and if Bruce had a handle on that or not.

“Guys, we can’t wait to get the remaining stones one at a time,” Steve said when they were gone. “It’s too risky. I vote we use Tony’s time travel gear to get the power stone at the same time as the soul stone.”

“Already ahead of you,” Carol dangled a pair of little bracelets from her fingers. “Nebula and I will use them. Thor and Loki can use the time stone for Vormir.”

Nebula stared unblinkingly at Loki and produced a large root of sorts. She bit into it with a loud snap and crunched noisily. Loki frowned. 

“Mmm, yes, I agree with you,” Thor said amiably beside him. 

"It really does kill you people to say 'thank you,' doesn't it?" Okoye shook her head and Steve thanked her seriously. To be fair, she had provided the most precious metal on earth for their science experiment. 

Loki rubbed his temples with his fingertips and willed his headache to go away. He was used to plans that involved multiple moving parts, but this was a lot and honestly there wasn't a whole lot for him to gain from it. He leaned into his brother and let his warmth sink into him, willing it to sink into his bones and settle there. Thor was lucky he loved him.

“We figured out the process for wielding the stones,” Bucky said from behind him. 

The muscular soldier slid through the doorway, Natasha close on his heels. Their steps were silent against the ground. Nat immediately slouched into a chair and nabbed a lollipop from a bowl on the desk. Bucky took a spot near Steve, his metal arm clinking low and just out of earshot as he moved. 

“What, are you gonna take a nap before you tell us?” Steve asked wryly. 

A soft look flickered across Bucky’s face and Loki wondered tiredly if that’s what people saw when he looked at Thor. 

“Maybe,” Bucky tilted his head at Steve and earned an eye roll. 

“Oh my god, how did I get stuck in the room with all you lovebirds,” Nat said, disgruntled. 

Loki smiled at her and she rolled her eyes. Bucky began to debrief them on the stones.

“Basically any number of us can handle it but it’ll fry a human quicker, especially someone without direct experience with that kind of power source,” Bucky explained. “Thor, Carol, or Loki are honestly our best bets for the gauntlet.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘fry?’” Carol asked. 

Bucky gave her a tired grin and waved at her with his metal arm. “It means we’d match.”

“What about Hulk?” Thor asked thoughtfully. “His ability to regenerate is impressive.”

“Always an option,” Steve nodded. 

Carol shook her head. "Definitely not. He's too unpredictable." 

Loki closed his eyes and let his head rest back against Thor’s shoulder. He didn’t particularly care who wielded the gauntlet but he wasn’t about to volunteer. He preferred his limbs as they were, attached and fully functional. He might complain if Thor volunteered as well, because he had the same preferences when it came to his appendages...plus, he’d already lost an eye and Loki thought that was already enough to be getting on with. 

He didn’t know when he’d drifted off but all too soon Thor was shaking him awake. It was time to go. His bones felt heavy as he sat up and rubbed the grit of sleep from his eyes. He and Thor were charged with getting the soul stone off a planet called Vormir. Nebula had given them the location, the memory dump had been helpful for that much. But she knew next to nothing after that so it meant they were going in blind. Carol had insisted they take the time stone in case they needed a reset. 

“We’ll be fine on Morag,” she waved them off. 

They stepped up to the platform and Thor clambered up behind them as soon as they vanished. Loki grasped the Tesseract and let Thor pull him in. He closed his eyes and the world spun around them, tearing at them as they hurtled through time.

*

They landed on the rocky side of a mountain. Loki loosened his grip on Thor’s cloak and looked around. It was a dark, vast landscape of stone that stretched out for miles around them, as harsh and dead as the deep purple sky smeared above them. It looked to him like it was that way all the time.

“Quiet, brother,” Thor whispered loudly, beckoning him towards the long, winding staircase cut into the mountainside. 

“You don’t figure.” 

Loki pursed his lips but followed after him. Snow drifted down as they climbed, muffling their footsteps and the sound of their breath in the still air. 

It seemed to take forever. Loki’s legs burned with effort as they climbed and climbed endlessly. He was about to tug on Thor’s cloak and beg him to stop when Thor suddenly grabbed him and dragged them behind an outcropping. Adrenaline shot through his system. Thor’s heavy hand clamped down on his mouth before he could utter a sound. 

He tried to still his heavy breathing against the warmth of Thor’s palm as he searched his eyes for an answer. Thor looked at him pointedly. _Look, but slowly._ He removed his hand.

With a massive effort, Loki quieted his breaths against the screaming of his lungs and carefully peered out from their hiding spot. Blood thundered in his ears. 

Just beyond them the staircase finally came to an end in a giant flat top. A number of pillars loomed heavily above, two of which framed a small area that lead to a cliff. Between the two large pillars stood Thanos, his hulking silhouette obscuring the gigantic eclipse that filled the sky with a dripping red, thick against the purple horizon. 

There were two other figures beside him, one cloaked and ominous, standing several paces back. The other was slender and dwarfed by the titan so much so that it took Loki a moment to realize she was there. 

Beside him, Thor shifted and his face came to hover next to his. Loki watched the scene play out with bated breath. The soul stone would demand more than simply finder’s keepers, he had always suspected it, but the histories were largely vague about the stone and its purpose. 

He watched as they exchanged words, their voices dying on the back of snowflakes. The slender figure backed away, shaking her head. Then, with the swift intention born only of trained warriors, she produced a knife and stabbed it into herself. But it vanished. 

Loki swallowed an involuntary noise of horror in his throat as the titan dragged her to the edge and threw her. Her screams pierced the air and then came to a sudden, chilling halt. Thanos stood frozen at the ledge for a moment, then he shimmered and vanished.

Thor was shaking with rage beside him, a tear burned its way down his cheek disappearing into his beard. His teeth were bared in a terrible grimace. 

“I knew her,” his voice was trembling. “She was his other daughter.”

Thanos hadn’t even hesitated. 

Loki felt a little sick, but he swallowed and slipped out from their hiding spot, ignoring Thor’s fervent hiss _(Loki!)_ and the frantic grab for his cloak. Loki whisked the green cloth out of reach and walked forward, making no effort to conceal himself. 

The figured in the cloak had remained on the ledge and turned at his approach. Loki eyed him. He was no stranger to the various races that existed within the galaxy, but this was not one he was familiar with. A red skull stared back at him, unblinking, the horrifying manifestation of a nightmare. Sharp angles protruded out from within the hood, casting deep shadows along the hollows of his cheeks.

“Welcome, Loki, son of Odin.”

Loki frowned. “I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

“I know all who journey here.”

He couldn’t help if his eyebrows shot up of their own accord. “Pleasure. Look, I’ll cut straight to the point, I know this is where the soul stone is kept. I’m guessing,” he clicked his tongue and pointed towards the cliff. “Sacrifice is the price one pays?”

“Indeed.”

“It wouldn’t still available by any chance, would it?” 

“It has been recently claimed.”

Loki had a feeling if the Red Skull had eyebrows they would be raised. While he knew and he and Thor weren’t always the most subtle team, something told him their presence had been noted the moment they landed on the mountain. 

He hummed, “Well, that’s unfortunate. There isn’t more than one, is there?”

The red skull regarded him with the dull indifference of somebody who had heard the same question over and over again. 

“There is not.”

“Splendid.” It didn’t really help him, but it did set the wheels of his mind into motion. “Well, this _has_ been enlightening, but I’m afraid I’ll be leaving now.”

The skull didn’t attempt to stop him, merely saying, “tell your brother he need not hide himself next time.”

Loki was proud that his feet didn’t falter as he walked away, even though the words sent a chill down his spine. The Red Skull was unsettling to say the least, even by his standards. 

“Are you crazy?!” Thor snapped when he returned. 

He was flushed and aggravated. Loki shrugged, unbothered, and proceeded to tell him what he’d learned. Thor’s brows drew together in a fierce ‘v’ on his forehead as he spoke, deepening with each passing second. When he’d finished, Thor immediately shook his head. 

“No. There has to be some other way.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you—” Loki began, but Thor cut him off.

“How are we supposed to get the stone, then?”

Loki looked at him impatiently, annoyed by the interruption. Thor took his silence as something else entirely. His expression turned dark and he opened his mouth to say something, but Loki got there first.

“I do believe I’ve had enough practice with death,” he joked dryly. “It’s high time you did something.”

“You think I won’t do it?” Thor challenged instantly.

No, on the contrary, but he’d attempted to pass it off lightly in jest in an effort to stave off panic. Loki knew perfectly well how quickly Thor would throw himself from a cliff for his friends of his own free will. A self-sacrificing idiot to the core. 

Thor’s chin jutted out, daring Loki to defy him, determination burning through his rigid stance.

“Would you slow down, you absolute moron,” Loki drawled the words to cover the fact that his voice was shaking at the prospect. “Let me think.”

He wasn’t actually interested in debating the sacrifice they would have to make for the stone. They weren’t in trouble quite yet and there was no need for his brother to go flinging himself off cliffs in the interim. There had to be another way, there always was. 

“Look,” Thor said, clearly still on the same tangent. “We can’t win without the stone and we can’t go back without it. I do not fear death, brother.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Loki sighed and snatched Thor’s hand. He gripped it a little harder than necessary. “Take us back.”

“I won’t let you—”

“I’m not planning on dying, you idiot,” his nails pressed into the flesh of Thor’s palm. “I need to see it happen with Thanos again.”

Thor hesitated, his eyes searching suspiciously. Loki stared back resolutely. He should know better than to use the truth to appeal to anybody, they never trusted him for it. But Thor was not anybody and he must have been satisfied with what he saw because he produced the green stone in his palm and, with a much shorter trip, they landed at the base of the mountain again.

Loki dusted himself off and glared. “Really? The bottom of the mountain again, Thor? I’m not climbing this again.”

Thor sighed exasperatedly and muttered something about ‘insufferable siblings,’ but grabbed Loki’s wrist and brought them forward.

“That’s better,” Loki muttered as they landed behind Thanos and his daughter as they approached the ledge. They darted behind a pillar, much closer than before, and listened in. When the daughter’s screams echoed through the canyon again, he blocked it out and focused on the Titan. Thanos just stood there, his arms dangling at his sides, seemingly frozen in horror. 

Loki squinted at his hands to see if the stone appeared at any point before he vanished. It didn’t. 

“Odinson,” the Red Skull called when Thanos vanished. “Why have you come?”

“Would you believe me if I said academic interest?” Loki asked serenely, backing into Thor and nudging him, hoping to Ymir his brother would understand. 

He did. 

They landed behind the pillar again. 

“What are you trying to do?” Thor whispered. 

Loki ignored him and darted towards a different vantage point to watch the scene play out again.

“Loki!”

Thor’s tone was a little angry but mostly confused as Loki ordered him to take them back again and again. Where did Thanos go? Did it transport him to another realm? Another place on Vormir? Loki ran forward this next time, Thor close on his heels. 

“Ah, Odinsons,” the Red Skull said without bothering to feign surprise. “What questions do you bring me now?”

“Where does the Titan go?” Loki asked breathlessly. “Where does he vanish to?”

The tattered edges of the Red Skull’s cloak swirled against the wind as he raised a hand to point. “Those who successfully claim the stone will wake in the pool.”

Loki walked to the edge and peered over. A dark body of water lapped glumly at the edges of the mountain. It was wide but shallow. Tiny waves on the surface scattered the image of the bleak purple sky reflected back at him. 

“They simply wake in the pool with the stone?” Thor asked in confusion.

The Red Skull just looked at them. Then something clicked. Abruptly, Loki turned back to the water and crouched, his mind racing a thousand miles per minute as a plan came together like the pieces of a spell finally fitting into place. 

If they could time it just right—

If they harnessed the power they had—

—but it would mean risking both the stones they carried with them. 

But it _could_ work. 

Thor was not going to like this.

*

_the places I've been_  
_the people I've seen_  
_plans that I made_  
_start to fade_  
_the sun's setting gold_  
_thought i would grow old_  
_it wasn't to be_  
_and i can't believe_  
_how I've been wasting my time_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Song lyrics taken from [Precious by Depeche Mode](https://open.spotify.com/track/3c4bJL7mARZvd387847GsC) and [24 by Jem](https://open.spotify.com/track/48d62MvdaC4lTjI0x4U4ij) respectively.


	5. Chapter 5

_please catch me now_  
_i'm lying_  
_you taught me how_  
_how it can feel like love_  
_just catch your breath_  
_we'll dive in_  
_and our descent_  
_will somehow feel like life goes_  


~*~

**Vormir**

“Are you mad?!” 

“Possibly.”

A vein pulsed in Thor’s temple as he stared at him incredulously. They were back at the beginning of this mess again, standing on the cold, carved stone stairs halfway up the mountain. Loki glared up at his brother, arms crossed and silent. Despite the snow’s muffling effect on everything, he could hear Thor’s breath crisp and swift against the cold. 

He waited patiently for Thor to work it out in his mind. He was fairly certain his brother would come around, he just needed a moment to process. What he hadn’t banked on was the feral look it would ignite in his brother’s eyes.

Thor was not a vengeful creature by nature, not usually, anyway, because frankly he didn’t have to be. But Thanos had drawn it out of him like a poison and from those depths came a lust for vengeance so bestial and savage it rendered his brother almost unrecognizable. 

Almost.

“Why not cut his head off now and be done with it?” Thor asked bluntly. 

He was always straightforward, though. Loki blessed his mother that Thor had the manipulative capabilities of newborn. Nobody had to second guess when it came to Thor. 

“Thor, _please_ don't do this. We can’t risk it,” Loki insisted, stepping close to cup his face. “The stone is priority. I promise you'll get your revenge.”

He knew what he was asking of his brother. Thor rarely lost a fight and he definitely never lost twice. The drive for retribution was overwhelming and even Loki wanted him to get his recompense. Badly. But he was also just forward thinking enough to know they only got one shot with this; the gauntlet was the only way to take Thanos out for good and be sure of it. They had to stick to the plan.

Loki watched the conflict rage within those beloved blue eyes. He ran his thumb along Thor's jaw, dragging it against the roughness of his beard, pausing to let it skim over the tiny silver scar that ran along his chin. His fault, of course, when he was younger and angrier, unable to understand why he wanted to hurt his brother all the time. Love had seemed like the least obvious answer and yet...

“Okay, fine,” Thor said finally, pinning Loki to the spot with his gaze. “But we time it _perfectly._ ”

He punctuated each word with a poke of his finger into Loki's chest. Loki stared down at his index finger with a glimmer of amusement. “If you think you have to remind me then you don’t know me at all, brother.”

“I know you better than you do,” Thor countered grimly. “And the only reason this will work is the fact that you have me to save you from your moronic impulses—”

“You forget you _are_ my most moronic impulse.”

Loki hooked his fingers into Thor’s collar and dragged him down into a rough kiss, his other hand sliding into the shorn edges of his hair. Thor responded to him feverishly, strong arms crushing him to his chest. It was almost violent and it punched the breath from Loki’s lungs. 

He could feel the bruise on his mouth when they broke apart. It felt good. A clean pain that cut straight to he heart and left him wanting more. He tightened his grip along the side of Thor's head.

“We do this once,” he managed breathlessly, searching his eyes frantically.

His heart was beating out of his chest in anticipation. Like with the gauntlet, they only got one shot at this. 

“Once,” Thor echoed and opened his fist.

The time stone glowed starkly against his palm. Loki pressed into him and tucked his head into the space between Thor's neck and shoulder. As he closed his eyes there was a pulse of light and a quick tug as they whirled back into the past for the last time. It was like moving through water, now. Loki’s heart pounded restlessly in his ears, thundering against his chest as they took cover behind a pillar to watch the sacrifice occur for a final time. Thor’s promise to the titan's daughter echoed in his ears.

_(We will bring her back, Loki. She does not deserve to die by his hand.)_

Loki steeled himself and when her voice stopped echoing across the stones, Thanos began to shimmer and then he vanished. 

It was their cue to move. 

His toes dug into the ground for purchase as he sprinted to the edge of the mountain. Thor ran beside him, steady and sure and easy as the wind. It had to be perfect. Blue light cut through the darkness as Loki conjured up the Tesseract and Thor’s hand pressed against the small of his back. Twenty seconds. 

They peered over the ledge, barely daring to breathe even as their lungs screamed for air. Darkness swallowed the lake.

A body began to form in the water. 

Loki's breath was sharp in his own ears and his eyes burned as he watched Thanos materialize on his back. 

The titan sat up and looked around with the agonizing pace of somebody who thought they had all they time in the world. Loki's skin crawled in anticipation. He wanted to scream and rip it off in frustration, but he tamped it down and bit his tongue.

Finally, Thanos looked down into his hand and opened his fist, revealing the faintest orange glow. 

Blood and fire shrieked through his body.

_“Now!”_

Loki wasn’t sure which one of them said it, but he slammed his seidr into the Tesseract with everything he had. 

Time nearly stopped. The icy plunge of of using the Tesseract seemed to take years as he screamed for air in the transition. Thor's hand glowed warm against his back. 

Then it all came to a stop and he was in the middle of the lake, wet creeping through his armor and flooding his shoes in a distinctly uncomfortable sensation. But he didn't care about that. He cared about the gigantic titan that sat before him, staring down at his hand as if he was astonished to find that it was attached to his arm. 

He looked up. Loki could have concocted a potion in the space it took for the confusion to scrawl across Thanos’ gargantuan features. Thor’s howl of restraint was a distant sound as Loki lunged forward and delicately plucked the stone from his open palm. 

Their eyes locked for a half second but Loki was already stepping away, a wicked grin splitting his face.

“Did I not say you would never be a god?” 

The words fell like staccato notes in an empty auditorium. 

Time sprang back into motion and so did his heart. Hammering at him, screaming at him to move, to get out, to die trying. Loki’s feet could only have been blessed by Ymir himself, he practically flew backwards. Thanos surged after him with a roar of anger, but Thor’s hand was already at his back and the Tesseract blossomed into light and smoke. 

A pulse of green and the familiar tug from the universe carried them forward.

*

Dust.

There was dust everywhere. 

Loki landed on uneven ground the stumbled backwards, catching his balance before he fell. He gasped reflexively and inhaled a cloud of dust. He coughed violently. Grit and tears filled his eyes.

“Thor!?”

“I’m here!” 

He looked around and wiped his eyes, ridding his vision of haze. They should have been back at the compound. He knew he'd taken them into the same place, it should have been the Avengers compound, but as his vision cleared he understood—this was the base, or rather what was left of it. Thor walked up beside him, squinting through the rubble.

“What happened?”

“Thor! Loki!” 

They both spun around as one. Just beyond them was Natasha, pinned beneath a steel beam. Loki was moving before he’d told his legs to work. She didn't look too beaten up, just pale and stunned, but that might have been just as bad. Shock wasn't a good thing in any species. He knelt by her side.

“Are you alright?” he asked, prodding her with a gentle wave of seidr. 

Frigga had always insisted he learn healing arts. He had begrudged the lessons then but once he'd accidentally stabbed Thor (or not accidentally if you asked Thor, it was still a point of contention between them) he had been grateful to know how to find and heal wounds. He sent another fervent prayer of thanks to his mother for her diligence. 

The seidr told him Nat was bruised and a little stunned, but otherwise okay. Thor grasped the beam and lifted it easily with a single arm and Nat crawled out from underneath it. She just cleared the beam and then flopped onto her back, squinting in the brightness. Thor let the beam drop with a crash.

“Ow, that hurt,” she panted, letting a hand flop across her stomach as she caught her breath.

“What happened?” Thor asked urgently. 

"I think we're out of time, boys," Nat said, sitting up gingerly. 

A shadow loomed over them as she spoke. A massive ship hung in the sky, guns trained on their location and still hot. Across the fields a massive army was rolling out onto the grounds, slowly, in formation, a towering figure at their helm.

Thanos.

“We have to move,” Thor said. “Can you walk?”

Natasha nodded and got to her feet. “Yeah, I’m good." She looked around at the rubble. "We have to find the others. I think they were in the lab."

It was a testament to Tony’s skill as an engineer that the place still held up structurally after having a crater blown into it. Loki picked his way carefully through the ruin, sending out tendrils of seidr to test for weak spots in the building. Nat called out for the captain and Bucky at intervals. She was trying to play it cool, but Loki could hear the undercurrent of panic in her voice. When they got inside it was still somewhat recognizable. They made their way toward the lab together, Loki in front, Thor and Nat trailing behind him. 

When they reached the area where the lab should have been, Nat called out again and this time she was met with a muffled cry. She darted forward and lightly climbed the mountain of ruins, calling to them to isolate their location. 

"Nat, stop," Loki said, reaching energy out to find life force. 

He found them, and even though their hearts beat to the same rhythm there was no mistaking there were two people beneath the building. Nat didn't seem to have heard him, clawing at the dust and rubble around them. Loki let Thor take over, letting his brother stop her. "You'll only hurt yourself and we need all the help we can get right now," he said to her softly and she relented, clambering down and allowing him access.

Thor had always been able to get people to do things for him, even when they didn't want to. Maybe that was why he was Asgard's king. Loki had never had that talent, although he got the same results by different methods. Thor moved the debris away easily in a couple huge armfuls. Nat stood by Loki hugged her arms to her waist, worrying her lip between her teeth.

Sure enough, the captain and Bucky were there, curled together beneath the shield and stunned but otherwise okay. The shield had protected them from most of the damage. Thor helped them both up and Nat hurried forward to hug them. She hugged Bucky fiercely. Loki saw her whisper a few stern words into his ear and thought he'd probably said similar things to his brother at times. When she hugged Steve his arms curved around her protectively in much the same way she held him. 

“Any sign of Tony?” Steve asked, when she stepped away.

Nat shrugged uncertainly. “Carol showed up to warned me about Thanos. When I told her Tony hadn't returned she went to look for him."

"Hm, that's probably just as well," Thor said, clambering off the mountain of debris and dusting off Mjolnir with a puff of air.

Steve frowned, “And Nebula?”

Nat shook her head. “I didn’t see her.”

The unspoken question hung in the air between them, but they had more pressing matters at hand. Loki cleared his throat.

“As much as I love to be the bearer of bad news, it would appear we have a Thanos problem,” he said mildly, pointing behind them. 

The army still filed into place, row after row of alien soldiers ready to fight. Loki scanned the impromptu battlefield, absorbing the situation as rapidly as his brain could take. Somehow Thanos had found a way to come for them now, at this time, and he’d known enough to bring an army. Maybe their situation with Nebula hadn't been so lucky after all. 

Bucky frowned. “What’s he been doing?”

“Other than taking out the compound?” Natasha asked. “Absolutely nothing.”

They all peered through the dust and sunlight to where the titan sat, calm and confident on a large boulder, his helmet at his feet and a giant double-bladed sword in the ground beside him. His arrogance was insulting. It made Loki's eyes burn to see it. Thor's footsteps sounded beside him. He called Stormbreaker to his free hand and Loki could feel his energy hum in the air, his power snapping around him.

"God, I hate him," Bucky said humorlessly, staring grumpily out at the giant purple titan and flexing his metal hand.

Steve put his hands on his hips and stared at the ground for a moment. Tension hummed through the air like a stringed instrument, taut and liable to snap at any given moment. Loki looked into each of their faces, resolute and steely.

If there was any group of idiots who could survive this war, it was this one. 

“Alright, here’s what we do,” Steve said. “We have to believe Tony and the rest are on their way, so what we do until then—”

He launched into the rough outline of a plan. They could hold Thanos off for now, between the five of them there was enough power to keep him at bay. Nat’s arms were folded and she was listening with a furrowed brow and a determined set in her jaw. Bucky’s eyes shone with fierce devotion and pride as Steve talked and addressed them each with the sincerity of a man convinced they were going to win. 

Loki supposed there was nothing else to believe now. The air around them sparkled with energy, little blue snaps of electricity burning their way through the air. Stormbreaker hummed like an engine just begging to be set in motion. 

“Let’s kill him properly this time.” That feral look was back in Thor’s eyes. 

It was a promise. 

As if on cue, they moved forward as one. Loki tugged at the strands of his seidr and held them fast between his fingers, feeling the power flood his veins, as much a part of him as breath. He could feel his mother’s strength behind each strand, guiding him. 

Thor’s rage crackled in the air beside him, wild and unpredictable when unchecked. Natasha walked on his left. Her resolute manner amused him; for a human with no special powers she still managed to hold her own in the company of the gods and the extraordinary. If humans were capable of being worth anything, she might just be the best of them.

A fire burned through his veins, a drop of adrenaline that set his nerves on edge. He’d never had the luxury of going to war with people who stood by his side not out of fear or obligation, but by trust and loyalty. 

It wasn’t the worst feeling. 

Before them, Thanos sat alone on a rocky throne, gallingly at ease as he watched them approach. They were of little to no concern to him. 

“You could not live with your own failure,” the titan murmured, his voice carrying to them in the still, hot air, as clear as a bell. “And where did that bring you? Back to me.”

The sound of leather tightening sounded from Loki’s left as Steve cinched the shield to his arm a little tighter.

“I’ve never liked long speeches,” the captain remarked mildly. “What do you say we don’t let him talk this time?”

“Did it honestly take you until the end of the world to find a sense of humor?” Loki asked him. 

Steve let out a puff of air and gave him a half smile. “Just to find yours.”

Loki rolled his eyes as Thanos rose to his feet before them and placed a helmet over his head. His armor glinted coldly in the light as he continued to speak, though Loki had long since stopped listening. Monologues were for idealists and megalomaniacs. The smell of ozone filled the air as a gigantic bolt of lightning crashed down from the sky. Subtle and bland as always, that was his brother.

Loki gave him a sidelong look and felt a surge of pride overwhelm him at what he saw. He would never lose his awe for his brother in this raw state, savage and beautiful. It suited the golden god of thunder like he was born for it. And he was.

“Thanos!” Thor bellowed, breaking into a run.

He shot forward and energy exploded around them. The axe met the double bladed sword of the titan with a mighty clang that shook Loki to his bones. 

It set the rest of them into motion. Thanos' army swelled.

Loki forced his heart to steady and focused on his breath as he ran forward, mindful of his teammates. All he could feel was the ground beneath his feet, sure and steady even as it shook with the onslaught of thousands of soldiers that swarmed to meet them. He dug deep and sent his seidr into play. It responded to his commands instantly and the energy extended from him to tether Thanos, wrapping around him and binding him in place. The titan broke through his magic like glass and every time he did, Loki sent out more. 

Chaos reigned around them, surrounding them more and more by the second. The cries of soldiers grew deafening. He could hear the sharp rat-a-tat of Bucky’s weapon as it smarted off to his left amidst the clash of metals to his right. 

From the corner of his eye he saw Steve catch his shield and drop to a knee. He was fighting back to back with Nat. She was already in the air when he caught the shield, perfectly timed to land squarely on the vibranium disc and vault off it, twisting as she evaded soldiers and took them down. She only ever needed one shot per kill. 

As soon as her feet were gone, Steve rotated and sent the shield spinning like a boomerang. 

At one point he saw Thor call Stormbreaker to him as he tossed Mjolnir in the air and batted it into Thanos’ armored skull. It bounced away and Thor leapt up to catch it, spinning around midair to send it back into the field.

Loki flicked his fingers and focused on Thanos, winding his magic around an arm. If he couldn’t hold him he would cut the damn thing off. Thanos bellowed and turned on him, struggling but clearly gaining the upper hand by the second. Loki grit his teeth and dug deeper. It required a lot of focus and he didn’t see the double blades leave the titan’s hand until Stormbreaker rang next to to his ear with a deafening scream and Thor sent the weapon hurtling away over the oncoming soldiers.

Thor landed with a thud in front of him, his arms spread wide to protect him. He snarled at Thanos as the sword flew end-over-end, baring his teeth in defiance. Loki touched his arm and nodded once. He was alright. 

Loki spun against his back and Thor turned and they fought as one against their enemies as if it was what they were born to do. Every time one of them moved the other shifted to provide protection in a seamless, deadly dance. They had been fighting one another since they were children, but they were always best when they fought on the same side. Two sides of the same coin, different, but inseparable. Loki marveled as his seidr worked for him as it had never worked before, surging up from a seemingly endless well of energy. 

_Mind your head, darling._

Loki ducked as a sword whipped through the air above him, just missing his hair by the space of a breath. Warmth bloomed in his chest. _Mother._

A surge of courage coursed through his veins and he fought with renewed fire. Bodies rose in a pile before them, but for every one they took down another two replaced it. They were overwhelmed. Loki could no longer see his teammates as enemy forces bombarded them relentlessly. 

And then Thanos spoke, his voice carrying through the din with ease. 

“Enough, I know what you have done,” he was calm. “And I will shred this universe down to it's last atom and then, with the stones you've collected for me, create a new one. It is not what is lost but only what it is been given... a grateful universe.”

There was a whine of machinery and a heavy clack of metal above them. _Not good._ Loki pressed his palms together and sent a blast of magic rippling out from his center. It wound through the mass of bodies around them, killing those closest to him and stunning those further away. 

He backed up until he hit Thor's solid back and looked up to see the guns on Thanos’ ship rotate in place, bringing the warzone into their sights. They begin to glow blue. 

Before he had a chance to say any final words to the gods (it never hurt to try and get into Valhalla in the end), a streak of orange lit up the sky, hurtling through the air at immeasurable speed.

An ear-splitting boom echoed across the field. The sound of a broken sound barrier.

Carol. 

She made impact with furious accuracy, not even slowing down as she approached, punching straight through the hull of the ship like a javelin. The soft pop of explosions from far above them followed one right after the other. 

_Pop! Pop! Pop!_

She burst from the other side as the ship collapsed. She immediately spun in the air to grab it and fling it out of the atmosphere.

_Holy hell, Danvers._

He was never impressed, as a rule, but some rules were made to be broken. He knew better than most.

Carol didn’t pause to admire the view but dove straight into the fray. Thor tossed his axe into the air and batted it with Mjolnir, sending her arcing through enemies like a butcher's knife. Carol and Stormbreaker whipped around the battlefield, laying waste to everything in their path. 

Thanos watched it all, failing to be impressed and managing to look simply disappointed as he readied his weapon. 

A crack echoed through the sky and a shadow fell across the battlefield. Another ship.

“Well, would you look at that,” Rocket’s scratchy voice blared over a set of loudspeakers. “Looks like we missed our invitation in the mail. What’s up, ya big purple fuckhead?” 

The doors opened and Hulk practically fell out of them, roaring as he went and landing in a small crater on the earth. Soldiers began flying everywhere as he scooped them up in bare hands and threw them. 

"Hey guys, wait for me!" 

Loki heard, rather than saw Scott. And then he was there, giant and towering over them at several stories high. 

"Scott!" Carol yelled at him and beckoned him towards the back lines. 

They'd brought one hell of a backup team. 

Okoye was next from the ship, shooting from the back in a graceful arc and landing in a roll. As soon as she was on her feet, her spear was a blur of motion, her face set in a fierce mask of hatred as she mowed her enemies down. 

"That's more like it!" Rocket cackled into the speakers as they got to work. 

Tony and Rhodey barreled from the belly of the ship last, already firing. Rocket waited until they were clear and then opened fire as well, soaring forward to focus on the back lines with Hulk. The loudspeakers were still on when he screamed over Bucky yelling, “Hey, you change your mind about that arm yet?? I got a gauntlet you might like in exchange!”

Bucky made a rude gesture at him, his metal arm glinting in the sun. 

Loki ducked an attack at his head, sliding his daggers from their place along each thigh as he did. Quick flip. Upward stab. Warm blue blood splashed into his hands. He hated this part, but he didn’t miss a beat as he straightened and continued with his seidr in one hand and a dagger in the other. 

Rhodey circled above them laughing as he mowed down their enemies. “Yeah! How do you like the War Machine!”

Tony landed with a thump. “Thor, hit me!”

Loki tucked and rolled out of the way as Thor caught Stormbreaker and Mjolnir, bringing them together and calling from above. Lightning crashed down from the clouds, channeling through him. Tony whipped around and the back of the suit caught the blast. The resulting beam of power cut through the air and straight for Thanos. 

The titan barely moved fast enough to block the attack. He roared with effort as he leaned into it, his feet digging trenches into the ground as the blast forced him back. 

“Yeah!” Tony yelped triumphantly, his voice strained as he fought to control it. 

Carol shot into view. “Hey, Loki! Catch!” 

Loki reacted reflexively as an object soared towards him. It was heavy when he caught it and Carol darted back into the fray as he looked down. It was the gauntlet. It weighed heavily in his hand, the power stone already nestled in one of the slots, glowing purple.

Out of nowhere the captain’s shield zinged past his face. 

“If you were waiting for a sign, that was it!” Steve yelled as he sprinted after it. “Go! Add the stones, I’ll cover you!”

Loki saw the shield slam into Steve's palm. The captain didn’t lose a second of momentum and hurled it again to create a small pocket of safety for him. 

Teamwork, huh. He was still getting used to it. 

He had two of the stones, but he called them up one at a time. The Tesseract went first, almost crumbling into powder as it filled in a slot along the knuckles. When he produced the soul stone it pulled at his fingers like a magnet until he released it. It settled immediately into the center slot like it belonged. 

“Incoming!” Steve warned. 

Loki looked up just in time to see the weapon flying towards him. He arched backward, dropping to his knees and letting his head fall back out of the way. He could have tasted the blade as it passed over him. 

“Good reflexes,” Steve panted, coming to a halt next to him. “Sorry about that one.”

Loki picked himself up and glanced around. Steve had managed to give them a moment’s peace, thoroughly clearing the area around them. Their enemies were thinning. 

He raised a brow at the captain. “Not the worst work I’ve seen.”

Steve gave him an odd look. “Was that a compliment?”

“Hardly,” Loki bit out, offended. “I don’t compliment people who choose shields as offensive weaponry.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah, well, I’ve lasted this long. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ isn’t that what they say?”

“I have no idea,” Loki huffed. “I’m not from this planet.”

“No, I suppose you’re not, are you.”

Loki rolled his eyes. Steve laughed breathlessly.

The captain was sweating, covered in dust and grime, his helmet long since gone. He looked like he’d been to hell and back and yet the proud set of his shoulders and the determination burning in his eyes told Loki this man would die before he quit fighting. It was exhausting to him, but he was annoyed to find there was a little admiration in there too. 

“My turn,” Steve held out his hand. 

Loki slapped the gauntlet into it and looked across the field. A new swarm was headed their way, a writhing grey mass of bodies. Flashes of blue and orange warred just on the edge of his peripheral vision, undoubtedly where Thanos was.

He dug his boots into the soft ground beneath him and breathed deep. Blood thundered against his eardrums as the adrenaline shot through his veins again. Combat had never been his favorite thing, it was too messy and it was higher stakes than he liked to bet on. 

He pulled on his seidr with one hand and readied a dagger in the other.

“Whatever you do, do it quickly, we’re about to have company,” he told Steve.

The shield snapped up from the ground onto Steve’s arm with a magnetic clap. 

“Already done,” the captain said shortly, then whistled sharply and waved as Rhodey passed overhead. 

He bent his knees and flung the nearly complete gauntlet upwards. 

“Where to, boss?” Rhodey caught it. 

“Thor!” Loki shouted.

Rhodey shot across the field in search of Thor. Beside him Steve looked around the battlefield. They had drifted farther away from the main battle. 

“We need to regroup,” Steve said. 

Loki glanced at him. He wasn’t wrong. Well, if he were agreeing with Steve it had to be the end of the world, right? 

“Fine,” he snapped. 

He pulled back on the offensive seidr and knitted it together into a clone of himself, then stepped away and sent it into the fray. Thanos' soldiers swarmed it, a little too stupid to figure out why they couldn't get a hit in on the clone. Steve’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline, but Loki didn’t give him time to comment. 

They raced across the plain, the ground shaking beneath their feet. Loki let his seidr take control as they sprinted, letting it flow from his fingers unchecked, the full strength of it flooding their path to their friends. 

He supposed he had friends now.

Steve kept pace beside him, truly the most adept warrior with a metal dinner plate he'd ever encountered. Or rather, the only one. He cut down their enemies with a blunt grace and somehow managed to use his body as a weapon when his shield was busy bouncing off others. 

Thanos was actively working against the Avengers now, the effort showing in the terrible grimace on his face. Overhead, Rhodey and Rocket made passes at him, firing with everything they had. Carol was alternating between perimeter work and darting in to slam the massive Titan and send him sprawling. 

Tony was a mechanical blur. With each blow dealt to him he had a new trick up his sleeve, whether it meant rooting him to the ground or propelling him to the side, he was taking them all out to play. 

Nat and Okoye were working side by side. Nat had commandeered a double-sided energy staff and was beating back the hordes. When that wasn’t enough, her agile martial arts skills had her tangling their enemies with her legs and practically body slamming them. Okoye was a constant state of brutal jabs. Wherever she looked, there was another dead soldier.

Loki felt his breath leave him as his eyes found his brother.

Thor glowed incandescent in the middle of it all, his eyes obscured by the blue glow of his power. His rage sparked and burned around them, leaving marks upon the ground as deep and charred as the tombs they should have been able to dig for their fallen.

Loki had always known Thor’s capacity for power. Even in their childhood he could sense it, he could bask in it, breathe it in. But to see it here, unfettered and violent, to know Thor fought for them...for him. It stole the breath from him. 

Thor had the gauntlet, the time stone was set. 

It was what Thanos had been waiting for. With massive effort he lunged forward, his eyes fixed on the prize, his arms outstretched. 

_"Thor!"_ He didn't even recognize his own voice as his throat tore. 

He shouldn't have said anything. He should have kept his damn mouth shut. Thor whipped around, the power in his eyes dimming just enough as he searched the battlefield for Loki's voice. 

It was enough. 

It happened in the blink of an eye. Thanos was on him and Loki saw Thor go flying. The gauntlet soared. 

_No!_

Thor hit the ground like a meteor, a cloud of dust erupting around him. The impact shook the ground.

Loki's instincts took over. He summoned his deepest powers and sent out another blast. It nearly took him out, but he fought the blackness at the edge of his vision and powered forward. His legs churned beneath him, he forgot where he was, his eyes fixed on his brother’s still form. _Nonononononono, please, no._

There was a cry behind him. He didn't know who. A metal arm flashed in the sun as the gauntlet was flung into the air. Thanos hadn't gotten it yet, good. He heard somebody catch the gauntlet. He didn't know, it could have been any number of their team. It could have been the enemy. 

Thor was on the ground, his eyes open in a daze, blank and unseeing. 

Loki dropped to his knees beside him. “Thor, you moron, wake up!”

He slapped his brother a couple times. No response. He could see the battle reflected in the crystal blue of his eyes. It was unnerving. 

Sweat dripped down his back and gravel cut into his knees through the leather of his pants. He could taste the salt and grime that coated his face and neck. The smell of death was sour in the back of his throat where his heart had been for some time now. 

Loki tried everything he could think of, drawing on the dwindling remains of his magic, twining it with Thor's life force pulling him forward. His core was more stubborn than he was. Loki snarled pulled a glove off with his teeth, exposing his skin. It was a last resort.

He took a deep breath. 

With some difficulty, he reached inside and accessed the deepest recesses of his magic, the oldest and most essential of all his powers. Blue blossomed at his fingertips and spread quickly down his arm. He was woefully out of practice, but the cold flooded his extremities anyway and a delicate lattice of ice flushed across his skin. 

He pressed his hand against the back of Thor’s neck and allowed the cold to crawl across his skin and up his face. 

That did it. Thor woke with a gasp like surfacing from too long underwater. If he hadn’t been busy gulping in oxygen he would have paired it with an indignant sound, one Loki was all too familiar with. 

“There you are,” Loki snapped, pulling the glove back on as his skin melted back into the pinkish-white of the Aesir. 

They scrambled to their feet as Tony shot past above them, leaving the smell of oil and fire in his wake. The gauntlet was in Nat’s arms as she sprinted by and launched into the air, spinning onto her back and heaving the thing upward.

“Go!” Loki shouted at Thor. 

The stench of ozone tore through the air as Thor blazed ahead, the gauntlet in his sights.

Loki forced his screaming limbs to keep moving. He didn’t know what he could do except hold the titan at bay, so that’s what he did. The seidr clawed at Thanos like a petulant child, small and comparatively weak, but irritating nonetheless. 

Commotion reigned around him, the flash of the gauntlet flickered in and out of his vision. 

And then he had it. 

Loki didn’t know how it happened, but Thanos had the gauntlet. The strings of his seidr snapped like the strings of an instrument and sent him flying backwards. He his his head and the world spun around him. He scrambled unsteadily to his feet. 

Thanos was straightening, a look of triumph on his face.

“I used the stones to destroy the stones. It nearly killed me,” the Titan mused slowly before them, observing the new gauntlet. “But the work is done. It always will be.”

He paused to look around. 

“I’m inevitable.”

They hit him from all sides. Tony went straight for the gauntlet and was batted away like a fly. He hit the ground with a thud and skidded to a halt where he lay like the dead. The sound barrier cracked like a gunshot around them and Carol was there, holding one giant arm back. Thanos roared at the interruption. 

Thor came from above and unleashed a terrible sound from within. Stormbreaker screamed as he swung and the gauntlet sailed from Thanos’ grasp. Thor took his other arm as he landed, the muscles in his arms like bulging cables of steel as he fought alongside Carol to hold the titan back. Thanos groaned with effort as the two strongest of them held him down.

A piercing scream cut through the air, shattering the sounds of the battle around them.

“Steve, no!” 

Loki’s heart nearly stopped.

It was a lover’s cry, the wretched sound of a soul entwined so deeply with another it would abandon all reason should the other be threatened.

It was only a second before Loki saw why. The gauntlet sat at the captain’s feet. 

Loki didn’t even think. As if by some spell the time had slowed for them. Bucky’s footsteps approached from behind and he flung out an arm to stop him. To his left he saw Thor and Carol start to lose their grip. 

It was their only chance. 

“I’m sorry, soldier,” he murmured and rooted Bucky to the spot with his remaining seidr. 

Bucky fought him with everything he had but in the end he was still only human and Loki was used to restraining much greater powers. Tears streamed down Bucky’s face, leaving tracks in the dust and blood. He knew his partner too well. 

Steve stooped to pick the gauntlet up and turned to face Thanos, a little grin playing on his lips as he slid it over his hand. 

“Not today, you son of a bitch.”

He looked at Bucky, smiled, and then snapped his fingers once.

~*~

Stunned silence.

That’s what Loki would have called it.

They stood alone in the battlefield, frozen in place, victorious and covered in filth. Loki had released Bucky as soon as Steve began to fall. The soldier’s footsteps burned a path into the earth as he went and the captain never even hit the ground, falling instead into his partner’s arms. His sobs echoed in the silence. 

Thor was behind him, his arms wrapping around him, violent and frantic, as if to make sure he was still there, that he wouldn't be taken and turned to dust. Loki clung to his arms in a daze. 

It was deafening, the silence.

It seemed as though they had eradicated all life instead of bringing it back. 

But then slowly, like the first rays of sunrise that broke over the horizon, the silence began to fill.

_fin._

~*~

_little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter_  
_little darling, it feels like years since it's been here_  
_here comes the sun_  
_here comes the sun, and i say_  
_it's all right_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Song lyrics from [Wake Up, Open the Door, Escape to the Sea by Blaqk Audio](https://open.spotify.com/track/4P66zeRULETWpgQWeqOhzw) and [Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles](https://open.spotify.com/track/6dGnYIeXmHdcikdzNNDMm2) respectively. 
> 
> -How we feelin' fam? Let me know below! Don't forget the epilogue will be posted on Friday!


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -So sorry this is late! My sister-in-law is getting married this week and I am horrifyingly optimistic about how good I am at time management. 
> 
> -Enjoy!

_father, won't you forgive me for my sins_  
_father, if there's a heaven, let me in_  
_father is there any way to see_  
_if there's room in heaven left for me_  


~*~

**Epilogue**

It was too noisy.

The world felt and sounded more cluttered now. He couldn’t hear his own thoughts, let alone sit down long enough to focus on a book anymore.

Thor had laughed at him and said he would get used to it. Thor said that it was the sound of life. Loki threw a pillow at him and buried his face in the sheets and screamed. If this was what life on earth was going to be he wanted no part of it. It all felt so _close_. 

He hated it.

*

Maybe it wasn’t the noise.

Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t feel like himself in this new world. 

He didn’t fit in. 

Not that it mattered, he had never fit in and it wasn’t new for him to be an outlier. He was used to standing on the outside looking in, but the hollowness he felt now was definitely new. He watched the happy reunions all around him and found himself bitter. It was everywhere, in front of his eyes at all times, a constant reminder of what he didn’t have. What he’d never had.

Still, when he went to bed he clung to Thor a little longer and when he woke he felt the disappointment in the pit of his stomach when Thor left him there between the sheets, the warmth of his lips still burning at his temple. 

The edges of his soul felt raw. Vulnerable.

He hated it.

*

What he didn’t hate was the friendship he found in the avengers.

If he could even call it that.

But it was obviously his desperation to find something to distract himself. He had never needed friends and he didn’t need them now. His chest did feel funny sometimes, though, and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Maybe it was the fact that his chest hurt somewhere close to his heart when Natasha hugged him goodbye. He had gotten used to her acerbic commentary and the late nights when they shared an alcoholic drink she called a "hot toddy". She was leaving with Fury, she'd told him. He wanted to continue the work she had started after the snap, her innovation and monitoring methods were something of a breakthrough. She was going to lead the program. 

She didn't have to say anything for Loki to know why her eyes were brighter than usual when she said goodbye, smiling in that slanted way of hers. He watched her walk away, shoulders pulled back, chin tilted just so.

He told himself he wouldn't miss her. 

If the hot toddy tasted a little bitter that night, it wasn't because he missed her.

*

Maybe it was the fact that Bucky had thought to say thank you. 

People never thanked him. 

The soldier had thanked him with a bottle of whiskey and the quiet camaraderie of sitting on the large balcony overlooking the grounds as they sipped on it. Maybe Bucky wasn’t so bad, after all. Where other people talked, Bucky was content to sit in silence next to him. 

It was a better thanks than he could have ever asked for. 

Bucky had thanked him for Steve. Steve would be fine. After spending hours using the remainder of his depleted seidr to heal the damage, Loki had at least gotten him to the point where the captain’s natural regeneration could take over. To his mild surprise, super soldiers could wield the gauntlet and not die a horrible death. Other than the arm and some severe exhaustion, Steve seemed no worse for wear. 

“You almost ended up like me,” he’d heard Bucky say to Steve as he left the room, his voice a little watery. “I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t because one of us would’ve had to change.” 

Loki closed the door behind him. 

Steve was back on his feet the following morning and two days later the two of them were married. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Natasha was ordained in multiple states. She married them in a tiny outdoor ceremony on the compound grounds. It was simple and short and, according to Thor, Loki had gotten far too drunk at their reception.

He _also_ said Loki congratulated both men by kissing them on the cheek and telling them they were insufferable. 

Steve and Bucky confirmed this story.

He still maintained this was a lie.

*

Stark’s family made his chest twist, too.

These goddamned humans. 

Watching the smart-mouthed man lose his shit the second his wife touched down on the grounds made his chest do that weird thing again. 

Pepper looked luminous as she stepped back and let Tony see a young boy whom Loki assumed was his...child? The kid (Peter, he would find out soon enough) didn’t seem to stop chattering until Tony pulled him into a frantic hug and kissed his hair over and over again. 

Loki knew family when he saw it. 

He shouldn’t, but he did. 

Peter happened to be the only person so far to roll with his introduction to Loki without batting an eyelash. There was no suspicion or wariness in him, he simply took it in and kept on talking. 

Loki found a book on the bed later with a sticky note slapped on the cover that read “Is this book about you true? P.S. Thanks for helping bring me back.” 

Stark also had a daughter he’d somehow missed in their quest to resurrect half the universe.

Morgan had taken one look at him and proceeded to spend the rest of the day tagging along at his heels. Loki decided he liked her better than her adult counterparts because she was content to draw next to him as he read, and although she ran a constant narrative on what she was doing, she never relied on him for an answer. 

Eventually he did end up helping her with a few things. Not because he liked the child, of course, but because her spelling was atrocious. And if he felt his heart melt just a little bit when she presented him with a picture at the end of the day, it was just a coincidence. 

Nobody had to know the picture was now taped to his bedroom mirror, a comically angry depiction of himself in crayon with the words “Unkle Lokie” scrawled across the top in large, awkward letters.

*

Even Nebula got to him.

Maybe it was because she and her sister seemed to operate on the same plane as he and Thor did. Nebula had body slammed her sister the instant she saw her, screaming angrily until she dissolved into tears and tried to hide. Rocket said it was because she didn’t ever learn how to process anything but anger. 

Loki understood more than he would ever admit.

Apparently the world owed their life to Nebula. She wasn’t the most candid person, but Carol said she had assassinated herself to keep Thanos from the power stone. Thanos had killed her future self for it. He’d gotten the pym particles from her, but she got the stone with the help of Gamora. In the end both Thanos’ daughters had been instrumental in his demise. 

“She did what?” Gamora had asked one night through a mouthful of the same giant root that Nebula always seemed to have on her. 

Nebula picked up the story from there.

Loki thought Gamora looked proud in a way only siblings could.

*

Eventually he lost track of all the reunions he played witness to. He lost track of all the introductions to people who either thanked him or looked at him suspiciously. The first few weeks passed more quickly than he thought. Phone calls were made, emails sent, tears shed, hugs exchanged.

It was all very sentimental. 

Humans.

His dissatisfaction about it grew and he couldn't seem to get rid of that bitter taste in the back of his mouth. 

“I’m bored,” he told Thor one night. 

They were on the balcony, soaking in the simple silence of a late night and a clear sky. Stars winked down at them, forming strange constellations unlike anything Loki was used to on Asgard. 

“Did you hear me?” he asked when Thor didn’t respond.

Thor hummed up at him. “Sorry, what?”

Loki looked down exasperatedly, his fingers halting their repetitive path against Thor’s shorn head.

“I’m bored,” he repeated. “Is this what being an Avenger is always like?”

“Mmm, pretty much,” Thor said.

A frustrated growl made its way past his lips, although he hadn’t meant it to. Thor finally opened his eyes to look at him. They were strikingly blue even in the dark. There was a time when he would have wasted hours looking into those eyes as if to memorize their depths; he wanted to know the strength and the savagery that lay behind that insufferable optimism. But the thing about that was he already knew them. He alone was intimately acquainted with Thor’s dark side, his rage, his fire, his brutality—they lay there, just beyond the lines of laughter that were trying to settle at the corners of his eyes. 

When Loki looked at them now, he saw more than that, he saw the scars of pain and sadness—now he bore the marks of a war that nearly cost him his soul. It was the kind of resilience that could only come from living through horror after horror, nightmare after nightmare, but somehow finding the strength to make it through each day anyway. 

Thor’s lips were moving but Loki didn’t hear him. He let his fingers slide along Thor’s bare chest and the cords of muscle there, letting the heat from his body sink into his fingertips. 

“I don’t want to stay here,” he said softly. “Can we go?”

Thor’s fingers found his and tangled them together against his heart. “Where do you want to go?” 

“Anywhere,” Loki whispered.

Thor smiled at him faintly. “Steve owes me money.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Thor waved a hand dismissively. “Just a bet.”

“Thor, listen to me,” he said gently but firmly. “I can’t stay here. I can’t sit by and watch the world put itself back together, I can’t.”

A shadow flickered across Thor’s face, but he quickly masked it with a smile. “I suppose it’s not where we belong, is it?” 

“It’s really not”

Thor was silent a moment. Loki let his head fall back against the wall and drew a deep breath through his nose. The stars winked down at them and this time he felt they were mocking him. 

Asgardians. The remnant race who took up space in a tiny corner of Earth like they had any right to it. Asgard was a people, sure, but a homeless people in a foreign land all the same. 

Loki breathed in the warm air that smelled of cut grass and the little flower garden that Banner and Okoye and Bucky (of all people) had started below them. He’d never had so much time to think. Time unobscured by plots for his escape from whatever cell he’d landed himself in at the time. 

The enormity of everything they’d gone through in the past several years swelled in his chest cavity until he couldn’t breathe and began to play his nightmares on repeat. He was tougher than most, hardier than most, more cunning than most—his life was full of things that should have killed him. Sometimes he wished death had done a better job. Even in death he’d had a purpose. 

Now it was just...to watch others rebuild, hand-in-hand with Thor, expected to be content with their lot. 

But satisfaction had never been in his nature.

When he began to shake, he didn't know whether it was from anger or sadness. Thor took him in his arms and held him steady, pressing his head to his heart and kisses to his hair. He didn’t say anything.

Loki shook, but his eyes were dry.

*

Steve called them to the hangar the following day.

It was odd being in that room again now that their work was done. Warmth filtered through the windows and dust spun lazy circles in its wake. Bucky was there as well, dressed in jeans and a black bomber jacket that he’d pushed one of his hands into. He had his hair half up and it fell in waves to his shoulders and a thin gold band glinted off his left hand.

“I didn’t realize you wore anything but a uniform,” Loki bit off instantly. 

“No, that’s Steve,” Bucky jerked his head at his husband, a crooked smile playing at his lips. “I love a man in uniform.”

It was a thing they did now, starting off with biting remarks that didn’t really have any weight. It was stupid, but he enjoyed it and it seemed Bucky did as well. 

“You’re headed out, I suppose?” Thor rumbled amiably. 

Steve nodded. He was standing at the control panel and frowning a bit as he made some adjustments. 

“Time travel,” Bucky shook his head in amazement. “If you’d told me one day I’d get to time travel, I’d have you checked for a concussion. Incredible.”

“All set,” Steve walked up to them. 

He was looking considerably less stuffy in a pair of jeans and a leather jacket that Loki thought Bucky had clearly picked it out for him. He seemed less annoying in it, somehow. The band on his hand was the same as Bucky's.

“I guess I don’t really know where to start,” Steve laughed sheepishly and brought a hand up to the back of his neck. “So, uh—”

“We got together with Banner and bent a couple rules,” Bucky said helpfully. 

Loki pressed his lips together, tired. "This hardly seems like a meeting I needed to be present for."

"Just hang on," Steve said.

Thor's hand found his and squeezed it. _Easy, brother._ Loki gripped back harder.

“Look, I know it can’t have been easy watching the rest of us get our world back,” Steve said seriously, pushing his hands in his pockets. “So, we did a little research and brought back yours.”

Loki blinked. 

Thor stilled beside him. 

“You what?”

Loki heard the tremor in his voice.

“I swear, if you’re—”

“We’re not,” Bucky said gently. “It’s why we haven’t gone back to return the stones until now, the research took some time.”

“Sorry it took us so long, pal,” Steve smiled tentatively, but grasped Thor’s shoulder all the same. “We did it for you, too, you know,” he added, looking at Loki. “I know we don’t always get along, but everybody deserves a place to call home. I had a feeling that was never going to be on Earth for you.”

His chest felt tight.

A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed hard. It seemed his silver tongue was destined to fail him. He settled for a crisp nod, hoping it said what he didn't know how to say. Steve and Bucky exchanged a look. They seemed to understand. 

They stepped on the platform hand in hand and tapped the bracelets on their wrists. 

Loki frowned through the blurriness in his eyes.

"Brother." It was a question.

Loki laughed wetly. "Those suits are so fucking ugly."

*

_One year later._

“Honestly, Thor, they asked for you to be at this meeting and it will have already started by now! Heimdall has been waiting for ages.”

Loki burst into the bedroom, flinging the doors wide only to be greeted by an empty room. Heavy green curtains had been pulled back away from the windows and a light sheet of crisp white rippled lazily in the fall breeze. Asgard sprawled beyond the window, burnished bronze and gold glimmering against the lush green of the summer gardens.

He sighed and let his arms drop to his sides. Silk fell in light folds from his shoulders, a luxurious swath of fabric that had been one of many custom pieces he'd had designed from Asgard's finest tailor. If he wore it multiple times a week it had nothing to do with the fact that Thor said made him look like a god. 

The gold at his wrists clinked delicately as his hands flopped uselessly in the air. The circlet on his head, endowed with multiple layers of fine gold chains and precious gems, moved gently with the sweep of his hair. It had grown past his shoulders now and fell in soft curls that Thor liked to spend hours tangling his fingers in. 

“Fine, have it your way,” he said to the air, sniffing haughtily. “But when Nicholas yells at you, I’m not going to be the one to back you up.”

Heavy hands slid around his waist and trapped him against the firm, rolling heat of his brother's body. He couldn't help the fact that he simply melted against him, molding to the slope and curve of Thor's chest all the way down to his feet.

“He hates it that you call him that,” Thor's voice was deep as his lips brushed his ear. It sent shivers through his bones. “And when have you ever failed to back me up, little brother?”

Loki craned his neck to look his brother in the eye. 

“I have literally never supported you to anybody’s face,” he said bluntly. 

Thor chuckled. “I’m sure I could persuade you to.”

Loki felt his gut stir deep in his belly. Thor had truly grown into his role as king of Asgard now, more so than he had ever before. The role was astonishingly beautiful on him. He wore a heavy crown of gold set with rubies and rings on his fingers, nine of them signifying a realms he was responsible for. The tenth was reserved for Loki, a silver snake that wrapped around his finger, devouring an emerald. At night, he took all of them off but Loki's.

Loki himself didn't wear a ring and his fingers lay bare, long and pale as they had always been. He belonged to chaos first and foremost, but nobody needed wrought metal to know he belonged to Thor as well. He had never worn his heart on his sleeve, he didn't even know if he had a heart left to put on display, but he was Thor's and Thor was his. 

“Oooh, you are a bold one," Loki breathed, reaching up to drag a finger across his brother’s lips. "You hardly have the upper hand here."

Thor moaned in protest, chasing his finger with his lips. _("If I didn't know better I'd think you didn't want me to make this meeting.")_ Loki rolled his eyes. As if he didn't know what he was doing. He rolled his hips back teasingly, just enough to brush against—

“You are a menace,” Thor growled and spun him, catching his mouth in a bruising kiss. 

Loki laughed into him and leaned into it eagerly, winding his fingers into Thor’s hair; it was just long enough now that he could give it a good tug. He could feel Thor’s triumphant grin against his lips, but if they continued to kiss he wouldn’t have to hear him gloat. He pressed into him and let the flames of desire light him up. 

His moronic brother. 

His brother, a good man and a good king. 

His brother, the very beat of his own heart.

Loki dragged him to the bed where they fell into heaps of silk, much more than what Loki wore on his body. Loki watched hungrily as Thor came to his knees and hovered above him, hot and heavy. Loki stared, mesmerized, obsessed with the roll of his brother's hips and the fluid movement of his body. He could barely tear his eyes away. Thor pulled away breathlessly and posted himself up on either side of his face. Loki looked up at him adoringly as a calloused hand brushed a stray strand of hair from his face.

“Loki?” Thor asked, the hint of a whine slipping into the request. "Please?"

Loki sighed. "Why?"

"Because," Thor ran a finger down his sternum. Loki arched into it. "I want to see you."

"That wasn't fair," Loki gasped, his hips canting upward. It was all he could to to remember how to speak.

Thor rolled into him and earned a sharp gasp at the contact. 

"I'm a good king, not a fair one."

Loki smirked and looped his arms around Thor's neck. 

"Fine."

He reached deep inside himself and let a familiar cool blossom at his fingertips. Thor dragged his fingers down his chest as he sat back onto his heels to watch as Loki's Jotun form bloomed before him, gazing down at him in wonder like it was the first time. Loki shuddered as his brother's fingers followed the edges of the blue as it spread across his skin until the last of his Aesir form had vanished. 

Thor sighed reverently, his hands tracing every inch of him. Loki knew if he let Thor have his way he would spend ages just looking, touching the coolness of his skin, pressing kisses to all the places that made him gasp. 

He was not about to wait that long. He pulled Thor down by the collar and slid two cool, azure fingers against his brother’s lips and then pushed them gently into his mouth. He felt himself grow hard as Thor sucked on them gently, never breaking eye contact. He parted his own lips obediently as Thor did the same to him, his fingers moving in and out in shallow, measured movements, his hips echoing the motion and dipping just low enough to brush between his legs. 

The contact drove him wild. He surged up to catch Thor’s lips in a searing kiss. He drank him in, his breath, the taste of his lips, the heat of his arms that curled around his back. 

Clothes were annoying. Loki closed his eyes and with a flick of his wrist there was nothing left between them but skin. 

Thor sighed into him and then took them in his hand. Loki gasped as he pressed them together and began to stroke them slowly to the edge. He knew what he must look like with his pupils blown and his mouth hanging slack to make space for the breathy gasps he no longer controlled. Thor wasn’t much better, his eyes nearly black and sparking with just the barest hint of his power. 

Loki sometimes wondered what it would be like to let Thor channel his power one day. The risk thrilled him. 

Thor worked them perfectly together, a thousand years of experience guiding his hand, his rhythm, the way his breath lit along Loki's neck. When they came, they came together. Thor, bent like a bow above him as waves of pleasure rolled through him, his eyes pressed shut; Loki arched up into him, his hands gripping the sheets beneath them with a cry. 

When they came down he cleaned them off with a flick of seidr and wrapped his arms around his brother, pulling him down until his full weight rested against him. 

“I think you missed your meeting,” he murmured.

Thor chuckled and pressed a lingering kiss to his temple. “I’ll let you make my excuses to Fury.”

“Mmm, you’re going to regret letting me do that,” Loki warned, catching his lips in a soft, passionate kiss. 

They lay entangled like that all morning, warm, content, and blissful; together with nothing to separate them now or ever again. 

Loki let his hand rest against his brother's heart, reveling in the heavy beat and the solidness of the muscle beneath his fingers.

He closed his eyes and breathed.

*

_so darling_  
_i can’t wait for you to wake up_  
_i want to be there when you open your eyes_  
_darling don’t look back no need to worry_  
_i’ll be here waiting on the other side_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Song lyrics taken from [No Place In Heaven by Mika](https://open.spotify.com/track/4B6Qt2qwWsArvqwbmEJpxH) and [The Other Side by Parachute](https://open.spotify.com/track/6LcWyOIS3LyvH6IpLphBsV). 
> 
> -If you want to follow me for more you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/saltierbitch). 
> 
> -Thank you so much for reading!


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